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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★★★ Should you use 'noindex' to manage hosted content and protect your site's reputation?
If the site hosting third-party content uses the noindex tag on these pages, it complies with the policy against site reputation abuse and will not be considered a violation....
Google May 30, 2024
★★★ Does a temporary URL removal really take effect within 24 hours?
When a temporary URL removal request is made through Search Console, the page disappears from search results within a maximum of 24 hours. However, indexing is not removed, and the page will reappear ...
Google May 30, 2024
★★ Can we really count on the lastmod field in sitemaps again?
If Google stops trusting the lastmod field of a sitemap due to inaccurate use, it can start trusting it again if the site uses it correctly afterward. The loss of trust is not permanent....
Google May 30, 2024
★★★ Could Mobile-First Indexing be harming your SEO traffic?
If the mobile version intentionally contains less content than the desktop version, enabling Mobile-First Indexing is likely to lead to a decrease in traffic because Google accesses less information f...
Google May 30, 2024
★★ Why does Google separate web indexing and image indexing?
Google has separate indexes for web search and image search, which is why an image can appear in image search while being reported as unindexed in Search Console....
Google May 30, 2024
★★ Is it really impossible to selectively target image indexing?
It is not possible to block image indexing in Google Images while retaining thumbnails in web search results. Robots.txt or HTTP headers block access everywhere, preventing Google from recognizing dat...
Google May 30, 2024
★★ Does having separate URLs for mobile and desktop really hurt your images?
When a site uses different URLs for mobile and desktop with different image URLs, the transition to Mobile-First Indexing may cause a temporary loss of traffic to images....
Google May 30, 2024
★★★ Why is the removal tool not suitable for normalizing URLs?
Using the removal tool to normalize URLs (for example, removing the HTTP version during an HTTPS migration) is a bad practice. The correct method is to use the canonical tag and 301 redirects....
Google May 30, 2024
★★★ How does Mobile-First Indexing affect your mobile SEO?
After the implementation of Mobile-First Indexing, if the mobile content is significantly less developed than the desktop version, a drop in traffic can be expected because Google primarily indexes th...
Google May 30, 2024
★★ Should the SEO Starter Guide Really Remain a Minimalist Document for Beginners?
The SEO Starter Guide is designed as a document for beginners presenting high-level concepts. It should not include all technical details (such as complete robots.txt rules) but rather introduce conce...
Lizzi Sassman May 23, 2024
★★★ What Happens to Your SEO Data When Your Pages Get Deindexed by Google?
On LinkedIn, Gary Illyes stated that Google Search Console retains almost no data on non-indexed/deindexed sites, though he specified that one element remains "if the URL comes back." This statement w...
Gary Illyes May 21, 2024
★★★ Is using the canonical tag as a hidden redirect costing you your SEO rankings?
The canonical tag should only be used for equivalent content. Using it as a disguised redirect toward enriched or different content is not best practice....
Lizzi Sassman May 09, 2024
★★★ Does Google Merchant Center crawling count against your SEO crawl budget?
On X, Christian Radny asked SEOs a question: "Does Merchant Center exploration (automatic updates) count towards crawl budget?". John Mueller responded: "Of course, it's a load on your server. The goa...
John Mueller Apr 30, 2024
★★ Are You Falling into the Common Video Indexing Traps on Your Website?
Two common issues prevent video indexing: 1) some pages have structured data, while others do not; 2) in the rendering, the video does not load and the area appears empty to Googlebot, preventing its ...
Google Apr 25, 2024
★★★ Is one backlink really all Google needs to discover and index your site?
Google only needs one single link to discover a new website. Contrary to popular belief, it is not necessary to have numerous incoming links for Google to find and index your content....
John Mueller Apr 25, 2024
★★ Are geolocation redirects killing your Google crawl?
Automatic redirects based on user IP addresses are not the most SEO-friendly method. Google typically crawls from a single location and may only see one version of your site if all other versions are ...
John Mueller Apr 25, 2024
★★★ Could your video strategy be missing the mark for indexing?
Only videos that constitute the main content of a page are eligible for video indexing. If Search Console indicates that the video is supplementary content, it will not be indexed. Check the markup an...
Google Apr 25, 2024
★★★ Can a Server Outage Really Destroy Your Google Rankings?
During the SEO Office Hours in April 2024, Gary Illyes explained that brief service interruptions, indicated by a 503 code, had no significant impact on the crawl rate. However, if these interruptions...
Gary Illyes Apr 23, 2024
★★★ Should You Use Google's Indexing API to Speed Up Your Pages' Rankings?
Gary Illyes reminded us that the Indexing API is limited to job postings and event livestreaming: "It might still work, but since it's intended for these two things, I wouldn't be surprised if it sudd...
Gary Illyes Apr 23, 2024
★★ Do you really need a sitemap.xml to rank well on Google?
It is not mandatory to have a sitemap. If you choose to have one or more, you can give them any filename you want, not necessarily sitemap.xml....
Gary Illyes Apr 18, 2024
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