Google indexing PDF's
-
Hello,
We work heavily on E-commerce SEO and recently Google has started to index PDF pages (Datasheets) added to the product pages instead of the actual product pages. Has anyone else noticed this at all?
Seems to have got worse over the last month or so.
Thanks
-
Did you know that some shopping cart buttons can be embedded in pdf documents?
You can also place links in your pdf documents to direct traffic to product pages.
Or you can extract the info from pdf documents and publish it on the bottom of your product pages.
-
Yes, Google crawls PDFs but I don't think they crawl them "instead" of html. If anything, perhaps your PDFs are better optimized for the popular keywords than the pages..?
As for your question, no I have not noticed any changes in the way Google crawls PDFs. I personally made the decision a few months ago to no-crawl our PDF folder to avoid them being indexed as I saw no reason for it.
I friggin hate PDFs and if it wasn't for certain members of certain departments of a certain company using certain browsers like a certain Internet Explorer 7 and demanding certain PDFs to send to certain clients I certainly would never use them.
Whew.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What would the US traffic increase be for a website YoY if all Google SERP rankings remained the same?
This question has come up a few times with some of our clients and I've spent some time researching this question, but I can't find an answer online so hopefully, someone at MOZ has this data available to them with all the data they collect. The data points that would be needed to answer this question off the top of my head: Increase in the # of Google Searches in the US YoY The decrease in CTR for organic results "10 blue links" which take a searcher off of Google YoY, as Google continues to keep more searchers on Google.com with rich snippets, increased AdWords prominence, AdWords extensions, etc I'm sure this greatly varies per industry, but an average for all industries is all that is needed to answer this client question. Many thanks in advance and I've included a video which hopefully helps to better explain the search "plus/minus" that we can expect to see as SEOs in 2018. WF1yLlJC6LetnpbD3
Search Behavior | | WebpageFX1 -
What is the best way to learn google analytics?
Hi I'm trying to get my head around google analytics as a first time user. Can any suggest the best place to start after I have taken a look through the whole thing, how do I go about managing and tracking performances on my website? eg: Registrations/sign ups, conversions all that sort of thing Some advice will be much appreciated Thanks
Search Behavior | | edward-may0 -
How come this one google places listing is the only one to show up google maps?
Hi there, I found a really weird thing about google places. I'm working on a google places listing optimization for a locksmith company in Houston, TX. When I was searching google maps for "locksmith houston" only one listing came up. However, when searching for "locksmith near houston" 880 results came up. This changes from time to time, but most of the time this one competitor is the only listing that shows up which is really really weird. Anybody has an idea what this competitor did to get rid of the other 879 results and show up alone on google maps??
Search Behavior | | activechase1 -
Google Analytics: advanced segment for hour of day
Cioa from 17 Degrees C cloudy Wetherby UK 🙂 In Google analytics I want to report specifically on Blackberry Mobile traffic next to hour if the day. Whilst this customised report I ripped off did the job @ http://bit.ly/hourdays I only resorted to this after battling with advanced segments thinking I could do the same thing. So my question is please how can I get this report http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/hrs-day-examplecopy_zps4f15d4a1.jpg by building it via advanced segments and not ripping off via http://bit.ly/hourdays Grazie tanto,
Search Behavior | | Nightwing
David0 -
Google Instant Search? REALLY?! Why is this the result???
First, this is one I thought I would never ask, but: Could this be true? I had noticed my MacBook Pro was eating some power and wanted to see if I could optimize my settings so to take advantage what battery life was available. (I swear that is the truth). So, I am at a Starbucks on someone and typed into Google search bar the following query - Best way to conserve - and, received the following instant search results before I could type - power on a macbook pro I am not putting it here as I want you to ask yourself what came up. I have attached a screenshot. My colleague arrived and without prompting she retried and got the same. So I am curious: Do you get the same result and why do you think that result is so predominant? This is funny. efuts.png
Search Behavior | | RobertFisher2 -
Google Penalisation - Any help would be appreciated!
Hi,
Search Behavior | | ChrisHolgate
We’ve recently received a Google notification of unnatural linking along with a confirmation that we're being penalised. There were a few other sites that we owned that perhaps had too many links pointing to our main domain so we trimmed them down and submitted a reconsideration request and got the following back: "Dear site owner or webmaster of http://www.refreshcartridges.co.uk/,
We received a request from a site owner to reconsider http://www.refreshcartridges.co.uk/ for compliance with Google's Webmaster Guidelines.
We've reviewed your site and we still see links to your site that violate our quality guidelines.
Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes.
We encourage you to make changes to comply with our quality guidelines. Once you've made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google's search results.
If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request.
If you have additional questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support.
Sincerely,
Google Search Quality Team" I want to stress that we have never in the past and do not currently buy any backlinks. The problem that we face now is that our site has been online for best part of a decade, there are thousands of people linking to us and I have absolutely no idea where to start. We don’t use an SEO Company but in the past few months have been using SEOmoz to improve our on-page optimisation. I know it’s a massive ask but if could a member of the SEOmoz community or a staff member quickly take a gander and let us know if anything in particular sticks out like a sore thumb it would mean a great deal to me. Of course, if needed we’ll employ the services of an SEO company but I’m hoping one of you guys will see something immediately obvious that could really help us out! Thanks in advance. Kind regards Chris0 -
New EU Laws governing cookies; will Google Analytics still be usable after May 25th?
Hi, first time I've posted a question, New EU Laws governing cookies; will Google Analytics still be usable after May 25th? - apologies in advance if its already been covered, but I couldn't find any answers when I searched - google search showed someone else ask the question already, but no straight answers were given:- From May 25th the Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive will come in to force which prohibits the use of cookies without informed, prior consent from web users. I've been trying to research to see whether or not this will affect Google Analytics.The Directive seems to be designed to prevent behavioural tracking, rather than web stats, but after reading the directive (with no law experience) I'm fairly confused by what will be prohibited. If anyone has any thoughts on the matter, I'd be very grateful! 🙂
Search Behavior | | bendyman1 -
Google button +1 ( SEO point-of-view )
Hello Folks, First of all, I want to start by: this is a "discussion" topic, which theres no right or wrong answer. I would love to hear from everyone your toughts about the GOOGLE +1 BUTTON , for the SEO point-of-view indeed. I assume that I did not add it to my websites yet, theres some reasons why. You guys added it? How is your audience behaviors against the button, they often click on it? It changed anything in your ranks, after they clicked on it? Thanks in advance.
Search Behavior | | augustos0