What does Google say about SEO? /
The Crawl & Indexing category compiles all official Google statements regarding how Googlebot discovers, crawls, and indexes web pages. These fundamental processes determine which pages from your website will be included in Google's index and potentially appear in search results. This section addresses critical technical mechanisms: crawl budget management to optimize allocated resources, strategic implementation of robots.txt files to control content access, noindex directives for page exclusion, XML sitemap configuration to enhance discoverability, along with JavaScript rendering challenges and canonical URL implementation. Google's official positions on these topics are essential for SEO professionals as they help avoid technical blocking issues, accelerate new content indexation, and prevent unintentional deindexing. Understanding Google's crawling and indexing processes forms the foundation of any effective search engine optimization strategy, directly impacting organic visibility and SERP performance. Whether troubleshooting indexation problems, optimizing crawl efficiency for large websites, or ensuring proper URL canonicalization, these official guidelines provide authoritative answers to complex technical SEO questions that shape modern web presence and discoverability.
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★★★ Is There Really a Limit to How Many Meta Tags You Can Use on a Webpage?
John Mueller indicated on Twitter that to his knowledge, there was no limit to the number of meta tags (of any kind) that Google can crawl on a webpage....
John Mueller Oct 01, 2018
★★★ Why Will the Mobile First Index Transition Take Several More Years to Complete?
John Mueller explained during a hangout that even though many webmasters have received messages in recent days indicating that their site has been validated in the Mobile First Index (MFI), the migrat...
John Mueller Sep 24, 2018
★★★ Does Google Really Index Content Hidden in Accordions and Tabs?
Gary Illyes reminded us on Twitter that, contrary to what some recent studies had suggested, Google does properly index and gives "normal" weight to text content located in tabs or accordions. He indi...
Gary Illyes Sep 24, 2018
★★★ Can Cookie Banners Actually Prevent Google from Crawling Your Most Important Pages?
John Mueller reminded us on Twitter that Google cannot crawl a page if displaying it requires the user to accept cookies....
John Mueller Sep 17, 2018
★★★ Should You Structure Your XML Sitemaps Differently Based on How You Submit Them to Google?
John Mueller explained during a hangout that if an XML Sitemap file was submitted via an anonymous ping, the URLs it contained had to be present in the directory (and subdirectories) of the Sitemap fi...
John Mueller Sep 17, 2018
★★ Should You Really Aim for 100ms Download Times to Optimize Google's Crawl?
John Mueller explained on Twitter that an interesting metric, in terms of page load times, could be to look at the Search Console, in the "Crawl > Crawl Stats" section, and then try to have the "Time ...
John Mueller Sep 17, 2018
★★★ Can JavaScript Actually Prevent Your Site from Being Indexed in Mobile First?
John Mueller explained during a hangout that sites using a lot of JavaScript might not be transitioned to the Mobile First index....
John Mueller Sep 10, 2018
★★★ Should You Really Exclude All Redirected URLs from Your XML Sitemap?
John Mueller has said it repeatedly in the past: when you create your XML Sitemap files, don't include any redirected URLs (301 or otherwise). He reiterated this on Twitter recently. Google uses this ...
John Mueller Sep 03, 2018
★★★ How Does Google Really Index PDF Files and Why Should This Change Your SEO Strategy?
John Mueller indicated on Twitter that when indexing PDF documents or others (certainly Word, Excel, PowerPoint or others), it first goes through a conversion phase from PDF to HTML. And it's this doc...
John Mueller Sep 03, 2018
★★★ Should You Really Force Google to Crawl Faster During an HTTPS Migration?
Gary Illyes indicated on Twitter that, in the case of an HTTPS migration, there was no reason to implement specific actions to obtain faster crawling from Google. The migration will be taken into acco...
Gary Illyes Aug 20, 2018
★★★ Does Page Popularity Really Influence How Often Google Crawls Your Content?
John Mueller reminded us on Twitter that the most important and popular pages for Google on a website are crawled more frequently than others....
John Mueller Aug 20, 2018
★★★ Should You Worry About Search Console Data Variations Between July and August?
Google announced that a change had been made to the new Search Console to make the "Index Coverage" tool more relevant and accurate. The data provided since July 14th may therefore change, but this is...
Google Aug 13, 2018
★★★ Does Google's URL Removal Tool Actually Delete Your Pages from the Index?
John Mueller indicated on Twitter that the "Remove URLs" tool in Search Console only hides the URL from search results. It will therefore continue to be crawled, analyzed, and indexed until the 90th d...
John Mueller Aug 13, 2018
★★★ Does Google Really Honor the Canonical Tag Every Single Time?
John Mueller, on Twitter, explained that the "canonical" tag is not a guarantee that Google will consider a page as canonical or duplicate. Multiple signals are used and some can sometimes be contradi...
John Mueller Jul 31, 2018
★★ Do You Really Need Lots of Text on Your Pages to Rank Well in Google?
We asked John Mueller whether the amount of text on a web page could play a role as a quality criterion. In other words, could a significant number of pages on a website with very little text in their...
John Mueller Jul 31, 2018
★★★ Should You Notify Google About Site Migrations or Redesigns for Better Crawling?
John Mueller, this time on Twitter, explained that Google does not need a tool allowing webmasters to inform the search engine of major changes to a site, such as during a migration or massive redesig...
John Mueller Jul 23, 2018
★★★ Should You Really Avoid Combining Noindex, Canonical, and Disallow on the Same Page?
John Mueller, on Reddit this time, indicated that Canonical tags and meta robots "noindex" (just like Disallow: in the robots.txt file) should not be used at the same time because they are contradicto...
John Mueller Jul 23, 2018
★★★ Why Hasn't Google's Mobile First Index Been Fully Rolled Out After All These Years?
Again John Mueller, on Twitter, explained that the Mobile First Index was still being rolled out (we periodically see messages about this appearing in Search Console) and that there was still a lot of...
John Mueller Jul 23, 2018
★★★ Can 500 Errors Really Slow Down Google's Crawling of Your Site?
John Mueller explained on Twitter that when a server returns numerous 5xx errors (500 or similar), it can cause crawling problems. Indeed, in this case, Googlebot's crawl is slowed down and exploratio...
John Mueller Jul 16, 2018
★★★ Should You Block Crawling of the robots.txt File in the robots.txt Itself?
John Mueller explained on Twitter that it's pointless to prevent search engines from crawling the robots.txt file by adding a "Disallow:" directive for that very file in the... robots.txt itself??....
John Mueller Jul 02, 2018
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