Should you really index all category pages to optimize your crawl budget?

Why does Google insist on indexing category pages?

The statement by 金谷武明 (Takeaki Kanaya), head of Search Relations at Google Japan, questions a common SEO practice: noindexing category or listing pages deemed less strategic to save crawl budget. Google claims it needs these pages to map the site’s architecture.

The engine uses category pages as semantic connection points between different sections. Without them indexed, the algorithm loses signals about how you organize your content, which can degrade the overall understanding of your site and, paradoxically, the visibility of your product or article pages.

Does this recommendation apply to all types of sites?

Google does not differentiate between a blog with 10 categories and a e-commerce site generating 50,000 facet URLs. This is where the advice becomes vague for practitioners facing real scale issues.

For a classic editorial site with a simple hierarchy (Home > Category > Article), the recommendation makes sense: category pages have a clear structural meaning. But for a site with combinatorial filters (brand + color + size + price), the blind indexing of all combinations can create massive duplicate content and dilute PageRank.

What is the real reason behind this directive?

Google wants to ensure that its crawlers have access to the entire internal link structure to effectively distribute PageRank and discover deep content. A noindexed page can still be crawled and follow its links, but Google prefers to index it to evaluate its contextual relevance.

This approach allows the engine to decide for itself which pages to display in the SERPs rather than relying on webmaster judgment. Let's be honest: Google wants to maintain control over indexing and limit manipulations through tactical noindexing.

• Google favors full indexing to understand the site's topology and semantic priorities
• Category pages serve as internal link hubs that distribute PageRank to final content
• Tactical noindexing on categories may deprive Google of significant contextual signals for ranking
• This directive does not distinguish between simple sites and complex platforms with millions of combinatorial URLs
• Google prefers to decide for itself which pages to index rather than follow the webmaster's noindex directives

Is this position consistent with real-world observations?

On editorial sites or medium-sized shops (a few thousand pages), full indexing of categories does indeed enhance content discoverability and semantic coherence. It is observed that Google uses these pages to display sitelinks and rich results.

However, on heavy e-commerce sites with multiple facets, this recommendation conflicts with reality: indexing tens of thousands of filter combinations generates massive duplicate content, dilutes crawl budget on low-value URLs, and creates cannibalization issues. [To verify] whether Google actually has the resources to intelligently index millions of facets without degrading index quality.

What nuances should be added to this directive?

Google's statement does not mention alternatives such as URL parameters declared in Search Console, canonical tags, or targeted robots.txt rules. An expert knows that it is possible to prevent indexing without blocking crawl through a combination of robots.txt + X-Robots-Tag.

Google deliberately confuses “not indexing” and “not crawling.” One can perfectly allow a page to be crawlable to transmit PageRank through its internal links, while noindexing it to prevent it from appearing in the SERPs and diluting the visibility of strategic pages. This nuance is absent from the official communication.

In what cases does this rule not apply?

Sites with automatically generated URLs (combinatorial filters, sorting by price/date/popularity, infinite pagination) must balance Google's directive and the actual health of their index. If you have 500 products but 100,000 facet URLs, indexing everything is like shooting yourself in the foot.

Likewise, empty, outdated, or under-construction category pages do not provide any positive signal to Google. Indexing them creates thin content and degrades the overall site assessment by the algorithm. In these cases, noindex remains the relevant tool, despite what the official communication states.

What should you concretely do on an existing site?

Start with a complete indexing audit via Search Console and a crawler (Screaming Frog, Oncrawl, Botify). Identify all category pages currently noindexed and assess their potential organic traffic, their position in the architecture, and their unique content.

For editorial sites or reasonably sized shops (fewer than 10,000 total pages), remove noindex tags on main and secondary categories. Ensure that each category page has unique text content (introduction, description) and a coherent internal link structure to subcategories and final content.

What mistakes should you avoid when re-indexing categories?

Do not re-index in bulk without prior auditing. Empty, duplicated, or automatically generated content category pages will pollute your index and degrade the quality signals of the site. Google will crawl these pages, notice their low value, and reduce the overall crawl frequency.

Avoid also re-indexing combinatorial facets without a strategy for canonicals or URL parameters. If you have “red shoes size 42” and “shoes size 42 red” displaying the same content, Google will waste time crawling duplicates and your crawl budget will explode for no reason.

How can you check if the indexing strategy is optimal?

Use the Coverage and Crawl Statistics reports in Search Console to track the evolution of the indexed page volume and the consumed crawl budget. A sudden increase in the number of crawled pages without an improvement in organic traffic signals a an issue.

Compare the performances of indexed versus noindexed category pages over a test period of at least 3 months. Measure organic traffic, click-through rate, impressions, and conversions. If indexing the categories does not improve any KPI, it is not suited to your specific context.

• Audit the current state of category indexing through Search Console and a crawler
• Identify strategic categories with unique content and traffic potential
• Gradually remove noindex from main categories, measuring the impact over 3 months
• Use canonicals and URL parameters to manage combinatorial facets without noindexing
• Monitor the evolution of crawl budget and organic traffic via Search Console
• Avoid indexing empty, duplicated, or low-value pages