Crawling and Indexing
Getting pages found, indexed and counted once.
XML Sitemaps: What to Include, What Google Ignores and How to Submit
What an XML sitemap is for, which URLs belong in it, the 50,000-URL limit, how Google uses lastmod, and how to submit a sitemap now that ping is gone.
robots.txt vs. noindex: Blocking Crawling Is Not Blocking Indexing
The difference between robots.txt and noindex, why combining them backfires, common robots.txt mistakes and how to keep pages out of Google.
Reading Google’s Page Indexing Report: What Each Status Means
What the statuses in Search Console’s page indexing report mean, which ones need fixing, and how to tell a real problem from normal behavior.
Canonical Tags and Duplicate Content: One Page, One URL
Where duplicate URLs come from, how rel=canonical works as a hint rather than a command, and how to make redirects, links and sitemaps agree.
