Overview

Controlling How Google Crawls and Indexes Your Website

This document provides a comprehensive guide to managing how Google interacts with your website. It outlines techniques for optimizing content discovery and indexing, ensuring your website is accurately represented in Google Search and other Google properties. Additionally, it explains how to restrict Google from accessing specific content.

Understanding the Basics

Before delving into specific techniques, it's essential to grasp how Google discovers and processes web content. For a foundational understanding, refer to the How Search works guide.

Content Indexing

File types indexable by Google

Google's indexing capabilities extend to a wide array of file types beyond standard HTML pages. This section explores the diverse range of formats Google can process, ensuring your content, regardless of its type, can be discovered.

URL structure

A well-structured URL benefits both users and search engines. This section emphasizes the importance of logical and human-readable URLs, improving site navigation and content categorization for optimal crawling and indexing.

Sitemaps

Sitemaps serve as roadmaps for search engines, guiding them to new or updated content on your website. This section details how to effectively utilize sitemaps to ensure timely discovery and indexing of your website's content.

Managing Google's Crawling Process

Crawler management

This section outlines methods for requesting specific URL recrawls, allowing you to promptly reflect content updates in Google Search results.

Reduce the Googlebot crawl rate

For websites experiencing high server load due to frequent crawling, this section explains how to adjust the Googlebot crawl rate without hindering overall visibility.

Verifying Googlebot and other crawlers

Learn to distinguish legitimate Googlebot visits from potential imposters. This section provides techniques for verifying crawler identities, enhancing your website's security.

Large site owner's guide to managing your crawl budget

Managing the crawl budget becomes increasingly crucial for large websites. This section offers specific strategies and best practices for optimizing Googlebot's crawl efficiency on extensive websites.

How HTTP status codes, and network and DNS errors affect Google Search

Understanding HTTP status codes is vital for troubleshooting crawl issues. This section elucidates the impact of different status codes, network errors, and DNS issues on Google's ability to crawl and index your website.

Google crawlers

Delve deeper into the various Google crawlers responsible for different content types and purposes, gaining insights into their specific functions and how they interact with your website.

Refining Crawling and Indexing

robots.txt

The robots.txt file empowers website owners to control crawler access. This section details how to construct this file effectively, specifying areas of your site accessible to search engine crawlers and those that should be off-limits.

Canonicalization

Duplicate content can confuse search engines. This section explains canonicalization, a method for consolidating duplicate content signals, preventing indexing issues and ensuring Google attributes value appropriately.

Mobile sites

With the rise of mobile browsing, optimizing your website for mobile devices is crucial. This section guides you through creating mobile-friendly sites, ensuring proper crawling, indexing, and optimal user experience across devices.

AMP

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) enhance mobile browsing speed and user experience. This section explores how AMP pages are treated by Google Search and how they can improve your website's visibility on mobile devices.

JavaScript

Modern websites often rely heavily on JavaScript. This section addresses the nuances of how Google crawlers process and render JavaScript, providing best practices for ensuring content accessibility and proper indexing.

Controlling Page Visibility and Information Sharing

Page and content metadata

Metadata provides search engines with crucial information about your web pages. This section covers the use of valid HTML tags, including the robots meta tag, data-nosnippet, and X-Robots-Tag, to control how your content is displayed and indexed.

Block indexing with the noindex meta tag

For pages you wish to keep out of search results while still allowing crawling, the noindex meta tag provides a solution. This section explains its implementation and use cases.

SafeSearch and your website

This section delves into managing your website's presence in SafeSearch results, ensuring appropriate content filtering for different audiences.

Make your links crawlable

The importance of crawlable links for content discovery cannot be overstated. This section outlines best practices for creating accessible and well-structured links throughout your website.

Qualify your outbound links to Google with rel attributes

Control how Google interprets your outbound links using rel attributes. This section explains how to use these attributes effectively to provide context and signal the nature of the relationship between your website and the linked content.

Removals

This section guides you through the process of removing specific content from Google Search, covering procedures for individual pages, images, and even redacted information.

Handling Website Changes and Migrations

Redirects and Google Search

Understanding redirects is crucial when restructuring your website. This section explains different redirect types and their impact on crawling and indexing, ensuring a smooth transition for both users and search engines.

Site moves

Moving a website to a new domain or server requires careful consideration. This section provides best practices for handling site moves effectively, minimizing potential ranking fluctuations and maintaining search visibility.

Minimize A/B testing impact in Google Search

A/B testing is valuable for website optimization, but it can inadvertently impact crawling and indexing. This section outlines strategies for minimizing disruptions caused by A/B testing, ensuring accurate data collection and preserving your website's search presence.

Temporarily pause or disable a website

Circumstances might arise requiring you to temporarily take your website offline. This section details how to pause or disable your website temporarily while minimizing negative impacts on your search engine rankings and ensuring a smooth reactivation process.