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.
Quick SEO Quiz

Test your SEO knowledge in 5 questions

Less than a minute. Find out how much you really know about Google search.

🕒 ~1 min 🎯 5 questions
★★ How does Google really index videos from millions of websites?
Google indexes videos from millions of sites across the web, covering topics ranging from news and sports to shopping and education. These sites include individual publishers as well as large platform...
Danielle Marshak Mar 17, 2021
★★★ How does Google really index your online videos?
When Google talks about indexing a video or displaying a video result in search, it actually refers to the combination of that video and the web page it resides on....
Danielle Marshak Mar 17, 2021
★★★ How does Google truly identify videos on your web pages?
When Google crawls the web, it identifies videos on web pages using different signals, including page data such as video HTML tags and structured data, as well as separately submitted data like video ...
Danielle Marshak Mar 17, 2021
★★★ Should You Really Use Noindex Rather Than Robots.txt to Deindex a Page?
John Mueller explained on Twitter that when you want to deindex a page that has been previously indexed by the search engine, you need to use the "noindex" meta robots tag and not the robots.txt file....
John Mueller Mar 15, 2021
★★★ Is it true that Google really indexes hidden content in responsive CSS?
If an element is in the DOM but hidden on mobile via responsive CSS, Google can still index it. Google attempts to determine which parts are visible and values them for ranking, but the content in the...
John Mueller Mar 12, 2021
★★ Do Core Web Vitals Really Influence Google's Crawl Budget?
If Google can access HTML pages faster due to improved Core Web Vitals, it may potentially crawl more. This also depends on the site's capacity and Google's demand....
John Mueller Mar 12, 2021
★★ Why does the Search Console's internal links report show only a sample?
The internal links report in Search Console is based on a sample of pages, not all indexed pages. It does not match the scope of the index coverage report and serves to give an idea of the links that ...
John Mueller Mar 12, 2021
★★ Are keywords in the URL a ranking factor or just a temporary crutch?
Words in the URL are used as a very light factor. Google takes them into account mainly when it hasn't yet accessed the content for the first time. Once the content is crawled and indexed, the languag...
John Mueller Mar 12, 2021
★★ Can reducing page size really enhance your crawl budget?
If you improve Core Web Vitals by reducing page size, it can enhance your crawl budget. If Google can access HTML pages faster and render them more quickly, it can crawl more of them. However, it also...
John Mueller Mar 12, 2021
★★★ Is it really necessary to index the internal search pages on your site?
Internal search pages can be indexed if they are relevant and useful to users, similar to category pages. It is recommended to only select certain important queries and block the rest to avoid an infi...
John Mueller Mar 12, 2021
★★ Is it true that AMP or canonical really captures the SEO signals?
Google transfers information and signals from AMP to the canonical URL. For Core Web Vitals, Google tracks the canonical and uses the metrics based on it....
John Mueller Mar 12, 2021
★★★ Should you really delete or redirect expired content instead of keeping it indexable?
For classified sites with expired content, either redirect to the category page (soft 404) or return a 404 error. Both options remove the page from search results. Do not keep old pages labeled 'expir...
John Mueller Mar 12, 2021
★★ Does the internal links report in Search Console truly reflect the state of your link structure?
The internal links report in Search Console is based on a sample of pages from the site, not all indexed pages. It is not on the same level as the index coverage report....
John Mueller Mar 12, 2021
★★★ Do words in the URL really influence Google rankings?
Google uses words in the URL as a very, very slight factor. It is mainly used during the very first discovery of a URL, before having access to the content. Once the content is crawled and indexed, th...
John Mueller Mar 12, 2021
★★★ Should you block internal search pages to prevent indexing of infinite space?
The issue with internal search pages is that they often create an infinite space: any word can generate a page. While some may resemble useful category pages, the others should be blocked to prevent t...
John Mueller Mar 12, 2021
★★★ Is it true that mobile hidden content is really indexed by Google?
If an element is in the DOM but hidden in mobile responsiveness, Google can still retrieve it for indexing. Google tries to determine which parts are visible for ranking but understands mobile interac...
John Mueller Mar 12, 2021
★★★ Should you really block all user-generated content by default?
By default, block the indexing of pages with user-generated content using a noindex meta robots tag, to control which pages you want to include in the index. Remove it once the content is approved....
Martin Splitt Mar 10, 2021
★★ Should you really start small to unlock your crawl budget?
For sites with a lot of content, it is recommended to start with a limited set of quality pages. Google will learn that the content is good and gradually increase the crawl to 1000 and then 10000 page...
John Mueller Mar 05, 2021
★★ Why does Google take several months to reward a site's quality improvements?
After improving a site's quality (reducing advertising, removing low-quality content), the impact on Google traffic requires several months. Google must recrawl, reindex, and recalculate long-term qua...
John Mueller Mar 05, 2021
★★★ Should you really ignore Schema.org for e-commerce product variants?
Google does not use Schema.org to manage e-commerce product variants. For SEO, it is preferable to have fewer indexed pages that are stronger, using the canonical to group variants (sizes, colors) to ...
John Mueller Mar 05, 2021
🔔

Get real-time analysis of the latest Google SEO declarations

Be the first to know every time a new official Google statement drops — with full expert analysis.

No spam. Unsubscribe in one click.