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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★★★ Why Is Google Indexing More URLs Than Those Declared in Your XML Sitemap?
A user pointed out to John Mueller that in their Search Console, the XML Sitemaps report indicated there were more indexed URLs than URLs in the Sitemap. John responded that this likely came from the ...
John Mueller Aug 21, 2017
★★★ How Can You Prevent Google from Indexing Your Pre-Production Site?
John Mueller posted a fairly lengthy message on Google+ about the best way to prevent a test site (pre-production) from being indexed by Google, as we unfortunately see so often. If this mishap happen...
John Mueller Aug 21, 2017
★★★ Should You Worry About Google Search Console's 10,000-Pixel Rendering Limit?
The web page rendering in Search Console ("Crawl > Fetch as Google" section) stops at the 10,000th pixel according to a user's test. But, of course, all the HTML code is crawled and indexed. It's just...
Google Aug 21, 2017
★★ What are the only two fields in an XML sitemap that Google actually cares about?
John Mueller explained on Twitter that in XML files, the two most important fields are the URL (<loc>) and the last modification date (<lastmod>)....
John Mueller Aug 21, 2017
★★ Does Googlebot Send a Referrer When Crawling Your Pages?
John Mueller indicated on Twitter that Googlebot, when crawling a page, does not return a referrer URL, as a user would when browsing on a browser. A Googlebot visit is therefore similar to direct tra...
John Mueller Aug 14, 2017
★★ Should You Really Deindex Your Internal Search Results Pages?
John Mueller explained on Twitter why Google requires internal search results pages from a website to be deindexed: they create infinite crawl spaces, are often low-quality pages, and frequently prese...
John Mueller Aug 14, 2017
★★ Can You Combine Noindex and Canonical Tags on the Same Page?
A user asked John Mueller the following question: "if a page contains both a 'noindex' tag and a 'canonical' tag, does the canonical transmit the indexing prohibition to the canonical page?" John Muel...
John Mueller Aug 14, 2017
★★ What's the Maximum Page Size Google Will Actually Crawl?
John Mueller explained that Googlebot's current crawl limit for a web page is 200 MB (the last known limit in 2015 was 10 MB)....
John Mueller Aug 14, 2017
★★★ Does the Order of URLs in an XML Sitemap File Actually Matter to Google?
John Mueller explained on Twitter that you can structure your XML Sitemap file absolutely however you want in terms of field order, and this won't cause any problems for Google. The file is read autom...
John Mueller Aug 07, 2017
★★★ Can You Use 301 Redirects in Hreflang Tags?
We asked John Mueller whether a URL in a hreflang tag could be subject to a 301 redirect. His answer was clear: URLs in hreflang tags must be canonical. This therefore rules out the use of such redire...
John Mueller Jul 24, 2017
Should You Nofollow Links to Legal Pages and Terms & Conditions?
John Mueller indicated during a hangout that links to pages such as "About", "Terms and Conditions" or "Legal Notices" can be set to dofollow. For our part, we recommend nofollow (especially for large...
John Mueller Jul 17, 2017
★★★ Can Googlebot Really Crawl Your Site If You Use Cookies?
This has been known for a long time, but John Mueller recently reminded us: Googlebot crawls a site using a stateless protocol, meaning it doesn't take cookies into account. It's therefore up to you t...
John Mueller Jul 17, 2017
★★ Does the Position of Internal Links Really Affect Their SEO Weight?
John Mueller reminded in a hangout that the position of an internal link on a web page doesn't matter in terms of indexation: top of page, footer, sidebar, etc. In all cases, the link will be detected...
John Mueller Jul 17, 2017
★★★ Should You Really Put a Canonical Tag on EVERY Page of Your Website?
John Mueller confirmed in a hangout that it was beneficial to implement a "canonical" tag on all canonical pages of a site pointing to themselves to avoid DUST (Duplicate URL, Same Text, more explanat...
John Mueller Jul 17, 2017
★★★ Should You Really Avoid Automatic Redirects Based on Visitor IP Addresses?
We've said it often on our site, and John Mueller recently reiterated it on Twitter: don't redirect your visitors to one site or another automatically based on their IP address (and therefore their ge...
John Mueller Jul 17, 2017
★★ Should you really index a site with thousands of pages gradually, or can you submit everything at once?
John Mueller indicated in a hangout that it poses no problem for Google's robots to crawl, all at once, a new site or a new section within a site, comprising hundreds of thousands of pages. The only p...
John Mueller Jul 10, 2017
★★★ Do Google and Bing Actually Share the Same Search Index?
John Mueller reminded us on Twitter - but did it really need to be said given how obvious the information is? - that Google doesn't share an index with Bing (or any other competing search engine). Rea...
John Mueller Jul 10, 2017
★★ Will Hidden Content in Accordions and Tabs Finally Carry the Same SEO Weight as Visible Text?
Following Gary Illyes a few weeks ago, John Mueller confirmed in a hangout that hidden but potentially visible content on a page (tabs, accordions, etc.) will be treated, when the Mobile First project...
John Mueller Jul 10, 2017
★★ How Is Google Rolling Out Mobile First Indexing Site by Site?
John Mueller indicated on Twitter that Google was considering launching the Mobile First index site by site, as soon as the algorithm determines that the site in question will be ready for it. Therefo...
John Mueller Jun 26, 2017
★★★ Should You Really Use URL Parameters in Search Console?
Gary Illyes explained on Twitter that the indications provided by webmasters in the "URL Parameters" section of Search Console were directives followed by the search engine's algorithms, and that you ...
Gary Illyes Jun 26, 2017
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