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.
Google Will Still Show Desktop URLs for Desktop Searches After Mobile-first Indexing
If Google can find desktop URLs as well as mobile URLs for a site, then those desktop URLs will be shown to users searching on desktop. They won’t be forced to go to a mobile version.
Having Too Many Pages That Render Slowly Will Impact Google
If a site has millions of pages that take at least a few minutes each to render, then this will significantly impact Google’s ability to render and index the content on these pages.
Google Have Removed Their Public URL Submission Feature
Google’s public URL submission tool has been removed but URLs can still be submitted through Search Console and sitemaps.
Robots.txt Files Don’t Need to be Indexed by Google
Robots.txt files need to be machine-readable, but they don’t need to be indexable for Google to be able to process them.
Google Doesn’t Have Separate Way of Prioritising Pages For Rendering
Google doesn’t have a separate way of prioritising the order of pages to be rendered in the second wave of indexing that differs to the way sites are prioritised for regular crawling and indexing.
Google’s Indexing Systems Are More Patient With Rendering Than Live Testing Tools
When using Google’s testing tools for JavaScript rendering issues, you won’t get a truly accurate view of how Googlebot is rendering and indexing as the tools have a much stricter timeout limit to give webmasters quick results.
Google Treats Meta Refresh as Redirect Meaning Wrong Content Might be Indexed
Google treats meta refresh as a redirect, which may mean the wrong page is indexed e.g. a product listing page with a meta refresh to a payment page will mean the latter is indexed rather than the actual content.
The Signals You Provide Via JavaScript Shouldn’t Conflict with the Ones in HTML
The signals you give Google via JavaScript shouldn’t contradict the ones you’ve provided in the HTML. For example, if you add a follow link in the HTML but use JavaScript to inject a nofollow tag, it will be too late as the signals will be passed through this link with the first wave of indexing.
It Will Take Years to Switch All Sites Over to Mobile-first Indexing
John confirmed that it could take years to switch all sites to mobile-first indexing because there are many sites that aren’t ready yet. Google is assessing how to best provide more information on how to help people make their sites mobile-first ready.
Different Signals Determine Google’s Canonical Selection
John confirmed that rel canonical, redirects, internal linking, URL parameters and sitemaps are all signals Google uses to decide which page is the canonical from a group of pages that have been folded together.