Index
Topics
96 topics in 14 areas. Each topic page gathers every claim on it, from every day.
Open the interactive topic map: every area and topic as a tree you can expand and search.
Open the Reef mapGraph: start from any thing or topic, see its neighbourhood and follow the links.
Browse the 90 things: products, crawlers, reports, directives, status codes and more, each with every claim that names it.
The state of Search
What Google says is changing in how people search, and what it promises the web.
- How Search is evolving65 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- AI Mode usage and query trends39 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- AI Overviews usage26 claimsDay 1Day 3
- Google's five ecosystem principles10 claimsDay 1Day 2
- Search Agents in AI Mode9 claimsDay 1
- How AI Search links to websites10 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- Consumer decisions and the messy middle50 claimsDay 1Day 3
Publisher controls
Settings, meta tags and features site owners can use to shape how they appear in AI and classic Search.
- The generative AI opt-out in Search Console24 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- Google-Extended13 claimsDay 1Day 2
- Search profiles6 claimsDay 1Day 3
- Preferred sources3 claimsDay 1Day 3
- Linked subscriptions3 claimsDay 1Day 3
- Robots meta tags and noindex46 claimsDay 2Day 3
- Snippets and preview controls42 claimsDay 2Day 3
AI and Search
How the AI features relate to classic Search, which AI systems already run inside it, how Gemini and AI agents use web content, and what that means for optimisation.
- SEO vs GEO52 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- Query fan-out38 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- llms.txt17 claimsDay 1
- AI-written vs human-written content33 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- AI systems already inside Search50 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- Gemini and Search28 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- Content for people125 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- Measuring success in the AI era96 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- Chunking content for AI10 claimsDay 1Day 2
- AI crawlers and agents on your site75 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- Measuring AI visibility and brand impact44 claimsDay 1Day 3
- AI in SEO and content workflows47 claimsDay 1Day 2
How Search works
The pipeline every page goes through, from the crawl queue through processing and the index to serving.
- The pipeline: crawling, indexing, serving21 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- Ranking signals by result type6 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- How long Google's processes take38 claimsDay 1Day 3
Crawling
How Google discovers and fetches URLs, and what gets in the way.
- The crawl pipeline33 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- URL discovery33 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- Crawl errors53 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- Soft 404s40 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- HTTP versions and Googlebot7 claimsDay 1
- robots.txt rules96 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- robots.txt group parsing differences9 claimsDay 1
- Crawl budget51 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- Crawl rate limit (hostload)29 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- Crawl demand34 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- Crawl demand inherited by path5 claimsDay 1Day 2
- Faceted navigation13 claimsDay 1Day 2
- HTTP caching for crawlers5 claimsDay 1Day 2
- Directives and crawl budget32 claimsDay 1Day 2
- Pagination and "load more"10 claimsDay 1Day 2
- Crawlable links38 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- Sitemaps34 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- Similar URLs and URL normalisation10 claimsDay 1
Rendering and JavaScript
How Google renders JavaScript pages, what keeps content out of the rendered HTML, how to debug it, and how embedded apps fit in.
- How Google renders pages69 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- JavaScript SEO pitfalls and fixes124 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- Lazy loading and content behind interactions19 claimsDay 2
- Debugging rendering43 claimsDay 2
- Embedding apps safely: Web Fragments40 claimsDay 2
Indexing
How Google processes a crawled page: parsing and extraction, main content, tokens, duplicates, canonicals, redirects and site moves.
- Duplicate content63 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- Processing: from fetched page to index40 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- Main content and page sections36 claimsDay 1Day 2
- Tokenization: how text is stored23 claimsDay 2Day 3
- Canonical selection56 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- Canonical graphs: chains, loops and leaders41 claimsDay 2
- Redirects, site moves and alternate names85 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- Pruning and consolidating content10 claimsDay 2
The index and its signals
The signals Google calculates while indexing, how it decides what enters the index, what the index looks like, and how Search Console reports it.
- Signals calculated during indexing25 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- Spam detection and SpamBrain50 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- Index selection: deciding what gets indexed50 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- Indexing statuses in Search Console22 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- What the index looks like31 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
Structured data and media
What Google extracts from a page beyond its text: structured data and the schema.org vocabulary, product markup, images and video, plus accessible markup.
- Images87 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- Accessibility and ARIA24 claimsDay 1Day 2
- Why structured data still matters47 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- Implementing structured data61 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- Schema.org vocabulary17 claimsDay 2Day 3
- Product and merchant markup36 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- Video in Search46 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- Shopping data: feeds, markup and Storebot57 claimsDay 3
International and multilingual sites
Language versions, hreflang, country targeting and localisation, including languages written in non-Latin scripts.
- hreflang annotations53 claimsDay 2Day 3
- Page language and language versions36 claimsDay 2Day 3
- Country targeting34 claimsDay 2Day 3
- Localisation beyond translation70 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- Non-Latin scripts and word segmentation32 claimsDay 2Day 3
Serving and ranking
How Google understands queries, retrieves and ranks results, tests and updates its systems, fights spam, and builds the results page, Discover and its features.
- Rich results35 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- Query understanding74 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- Retrieval: finding candidates in the index16 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- Ranking systems and signals23 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- Testing changes and quality raters49 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- Core updates and spam updates45 claimsDay 2Day 3
- Spam policies and manual actions33 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- The results page and search features24 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- Google Discover14 claimsDay 2Day 3
Search Console
What Search Console launched in 2025 and 2026, and how practitioners work with its data.
- What's new in Search Console68 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- Working with Search Console data47 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
Search trends and Google Trends
What Google Trends data shows, the tools around it, and how to use search interest for content and SEO.
- Reading Google Trends data37 claimsDay 2Day 3
- Google Trends tools and features31 claimsDay 2Day 3
- Using Google Trends for SEO and content29 claimsDay 2Day 3
Working with Google
How the Search team says it works with the community, what SEO covers, and how to take part in the web standards Search builds on.
- Requesting features from Google9 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- The scope of SEO21 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- Web standards and how to take part25 claimsDay 1Day 2Day 3
- Organic results are not for sale7 claimsDay 1