Appendix D: Google In Depth Table of Contents
Google Search Central
Google Search Central is Google’s comprehensive online guide to search.
What Is Google In Depth?
Google In Depth (a component of Google Search Central) is a guide prepared by Google that explains how Google Search works.
You’ll find the Google In Depth at https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/how-search-works/ranking-results.
3 Stages of Google Search
Stage 1: Crawling
Google uses automated programs called “crawlers” to download web page content (text, images and videos).
Google discovers page URL’s and “crawls” them to figure out what’s on them. Google uses it’s “Googlebot” to do its crawling. Not every page Google discovers is crawled, either because the page owner disallowed crawling or the requires a login to access it.
Here’s an overview of crawling and indexing topics.
Google uses links to determine the relevancy of your pages, and prefers an <a href=”yoursite/page.com”> html structure to your links (as this makes it easy for Google to crawl. Here’s Google’s link best practices guide.
Want Google to crawl your site? Here’s how to ask…
Stage 2: Indexing
Google uses indexing to try to figure out what’s on a page it crawled.
Google does that by determining if a page is a duplicate of another page. Google attempts to cluster sites with similar content to select the one that’s the most representative of that cluster or group of sites.
The page Google may decides to show in the search results is called the canonical page.
Not every page that Google crawls or processes is indexed.
Google recommends keeping a simple URL structure on your site, here’s what Google likes to see.
Stage 3: Serving Search Results
Google machines search Google’s index for matching pages and return the results Google believes are the highest quality and most relevant to the searcher’s query.
Google uses indexing to try to figure out what’s on a page it crawled.
Google does that by determining if a page is a duplicate of another page. Google attempts to cluster sites with similar content to select the one that’s the most representative of that cluster or group of sites.
The page Google may decides to show in the search results is called the canonical page.
Not every page that Google crawls or processes is indexed.
Keep up to date by reading Google’s Search Blog (see the next section of this appendix)
Google Search Central Blog
Google Search Central Blog will keep you up to date with Google’s core algorithm updates, new search feature announcements and best SEO practices.
Google Search Central Sitemaps
A sitemap tells Google about where pages, files and videos are located on your site. A sitemap makes Google’s crawling more efficient. Types of sitemap entries include:
Video. Specifics can be provided for video run time, rating and age rating.
Image. Specific image locations on a page can be included.
News. Article titles and release date can be included.
URL: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/sitemaps/overview
Robots.txt
A robots.txt files is used to manage crawler traffic to your site.
URL: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/robots/intro
Mobile First Indexing
Google most commonly uses the mobile version of a site’s content for indexing and ranking.
AMP Accelerated Mobile Pages
Google has an online guide that’s specific to AMP, you can view it here:
URL: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/amp
JavaScript
Google provides a guide for JavaScript best practices and Google Search.
You can access Google’s JavaScript guide here:
URL: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/javascript/javascript-seo-basics
Page & Content Metadata
It’s very important to use a valid <head> element, because Google ignores invalid elements that appear after it.
Here’s how to make sure your page’s metadata is correct:
URL: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/valid-page-metadata
Removals
You can find out your options for removing pages here:
URL: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/remove-information
You can also refer to Google’s removals and safesearch reports tool
Redirects and Moves
Redirects replace one page location with another. When you move a page or domain, you need to tell Google where to look. There are two types of redirects:
Permanent. Most commonly, permanent redirects are HTTP 301 redirects.
Temporary.
You can find redirect and site move details here:
URL: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/301-redirects
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Appendix E Google Business Profile Carousel Cards
