Internal Site Search
Internal search offers the ability for users to search within a website and find further relevant content. While onsite search can provide insights into what users are looking for, it can also lead to some issues with search engine crawling. Within our SEO Office Hours notes below, we cover Google’s advice for implementing internal search with further recommendations and use cases.
For more on internal site search & best practices for SEO, we recommend reading: SEO Best Practices for Faceted Search (Faceted Navigation)
Limit Indexing Internal Search Pages
You can index internal search results pages, provided they are generally useful to users and are limited to specific terms.
Google Can Use Site Search for Discovery
If Google can’t crawl a site normally because of a lack of internal links, and it can detect a search form, it might try to find new URLs in the site search results by running searches.
Valuable Site Search Results Pages Can be Indexed
Google will crawl site’s own search results pages if they are linked, and may index them if they show content which Google thinks is valuable.
Markup Doesn’t Make the Sitelinks Searchbox Appear
Adding the Sitelinks Searchbox markup won’t help you get the box. But it may help Google get the configuration right if they are showing it.
Exclude Form Based Search Results Pages
Exclude your search results pages which can be reached through a text search form.