Indexing
In order for web pages to be included within search results, they must be in Google’s index. Search engine indexing is a complex topic and is dependent on a number of different factors. Our SEO Office Hours Notes on indexing cover a range of best practices and compile indexability advice Google has released in their Office Hours sessions to help ensure your website’s important pages are indexed by search engines.
Googlebot Can’t Index Content on a Page With an Interstitial
Googlebot can’t get past interstitials to the content beyond by clicking any links or the close button, and will try to index the content of the interstitial instead. John recommends serving an intestitial overlay using JavaScript so your content can still be accessed.
Meta Tag Directives Won’t Work for Redirects
Google needs to be able to access a page in order to pick up its meta tags such as noindex, which is impossible if a redirect is in place. Pick either ‘noindex, nofollow’ or a 301 redirect for unwanted content.
Pages With ‘Submitted URL Not Selected as Canonical’ Message in GSC Won’t be Indexed
If you see the ‘Submitted URL not Selected as Canonical’ message for a URL in Google Search Console, that means the page isn’t being indexed.
Content Not Visible By Default Will Be Taken Into Account For Mobile-first Indexing
Good user experience on mobile depends on managing content with tabs and similar methods, so content not visible by default will be taken into account for mobile-first indexing as long as it doesn’t load on click. This applies to anchor text as well.
Mobile-Friendliness Is Not Related to Mobile-First Indexing
It’s not "mobile-friendly" indexing – sites are being switched over purely based on using the mobile content for indexing rather than anything to do with mobile usability.
Responsive Sites Are Being Switched To Mobile-first Indexing
Desktop-only sites count as responsive because the same version is shown on both devices, so Google’s algorithm will have determined that these are the most straightforward sites to be switched to mobile-first indexing.
Content Loaded On Hash URLs Won’t Be Indexed
Google doesn’t index URLs with a hash separately, so if content is only loaded when the hash is used on a URL rather than being loaded on the main URL, this content won’t be indexed.
Sites Not Showing Fully in Search Console Should Check For Technical Issues
If a site isn’t showing up fully in Google Search Console this could be because you aren’t looking at the right version of the site; http/https, www/non-www all matter. If you are looking at the correct version then there may be a technical reason blocking Googlebot from crawling the site or perhaps the site has accidentally been removed from search using the site removal tool in GSC. John recommends looking for crawl errors in GSC and checking that there aren’t any pending removals.
Mobile-first Indexing Won’t Cause Ranking Differences Between Desktop & Mobile
Mobile-first indexing won’t cause ranking differences between desktop and mobile because with mobile-first the mobile content will be used for indexing for both devices.
Fetch as Google Doesn’t Make Any Changes to the Index
Fetch as Google only requests the page so it can’t be used to bring Google’s attention to an updated status code, for example. In order to affect the index you need to use Submit to Index where additional processing will be done.