Daily Search Forum Recap: February 9, 2023

As you know, Google has an indexing API to expedite indexing of two content types. It is only designed to work for job postings and live streaming content – that is all. John Mueller of Google was asked if it can hurt if you try to use it for other content types outside of job postings and live stream content and he said no.

Google is warning against using 404 and other 4xx client server status errors, such as 403s, for the purpose of trying to set a crawl rate limit for Googlebot. “Please don’t do that,” Gary Illyes from the Google Search Relations team wrote. Why the notice. There has been a recent increase in the number of sites and CDNs using these techniques to try to limit Googlebot crawling. “Over the last few months we noticed an uptick in website owners and some content delivery networks (CDNs) attempting […]

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today…