Understanding and Addressing a Decline in Google Crawling and Indexing Rates
In the realm of website management and SEO, consistent indexing by search engines like Google is crucial for visibility and traffic growth. Recently, some site owners and marketers have observed a significant slowdown in Google’s crawling frequency and delays in indexing new content. This phenomenon can be frustrating, especially when timely content publication is vital for business operations.
Case Overview
A recent scenario involves a client reporting that newly published pages—post August 20th—are not appearing in Google Search results, despite numerous manual requests for indexing via Google Search Console (GSC). The challenge was puzzling because standard troubleshooting steps yielded no clear reason for the indexing delay. The key points of investigation included:
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Ensuring that the website’s robots.txt file isn’t blocking crawling on relevant pages or directories.
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Confirming that no “noindex” tags are accidentally applied to new content.
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Verifying the presence of proper internal linking to help search engines discover pages.
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Testing specific live URLs in GSC’s URL Inspection Tool, which indicated the pages were accessible and eligible for indexing, yet they remained unindexed.
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Updating and submitting the sitemap accurately and flushing the website’s cache to eliminate any static content issues.
Despite these efforts, the pages still did not appear in Google Search, prompting further steps.
Additional Measures and Insights
As an alternative approach, the site owner set up a property within Bing Webmaster Tools, importing the existing sitemap and submitting URLs there. Remarkably, within a day, the pages started generating impressions and clicks in Bing, indicating that the content was discoverable by search engines but still not being indexed by Google.
Emerging Industry Observation
Recently, discussions within webmaster and SEO forums have highlighted a trend of abnormal crawling behaviors following Google’s recent Spam Update (and possibly the preceding update). Several site owners have reported a substantial decrease in Google’s crawling rate, especially for new or updated content, which may contribute to delays in indexing. These anomalies appear to affect a broad spectrum of sites, regardless of their niche or size.
Implications and Recommendations
Given the current landscape, website owners experiencing these issues should consider the following strategies:
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Monitor Google Search Console for Updates and Alerts: Stay informed about any messages from Google regarding crawling or indexing issues.
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Ensure Technical Best Practices: Double-check robots.txt, meta tags, structured data, and server responsiveness, as these can influence crawling efficiency.
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Leverage Alternative Search Engines: As demonstrated