Google is making an assumption about the page's quality based on other pages on the domain. Their classifications are based on URL patterns and website architecture. As a result, moving these pages from "awareness" to the crawl queue can be de-prioritized based on the lack of quality they have found on similar pages.

1. Influencing Discovery,
Indexing Strategies For
Complex Websites
Slideshare.Net/DanTaylor29
@TaylorDanRW
Dan Taylor
SALT.agency

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# Hello! ‘I’m Dan’;
* Head of Technical SEO at SALT.agency
* 2018 TechSEO Boost Innovation Prize Winner
* Marketing @ Mirador GBP
* https://mirador.solutions <EARLY ACCESS>
* https://salt.agency
* https://dantaylor.online
Influencing Discovery
brightonseo.html dan_taylor.css

3. Why do we need
to talk about
Discovery?

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Discovery is already on the agenda.
Search engines are already
“talking” about Discovery
IndexNow (badly named, IMO) - Bing,
Yandex, Seznam
Public statements - Google

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IndexNow DiscoverNow
Supported by three search engines
Adoption is increasing and likely will trend
upwards
If we’re submitting key pages - search
engines don’t need to go looking

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Welcome to the next
biggest misquote in
SEO.
Gary Illyes, SEO
Day, March 30 2022

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Discovered - Currently not indexed
The page was found by Google, but not
crawled yet. Typically, Google wanted to
crawl the URL but this was expected to
overload the site; therefore Google
rescheduled the crawl. This is why the last
crawl date is empty on the report.

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Discovered, currently not indexed
Google is making an assumption about the
page's quality based on other pages on the
domain. Their classifications are based on
URL patterns and website architecture.
As a result, moving these pages from
"awareness" to the crawl queue can be de-
prioritized based on the lack of quality
they have found on similar pages.

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Google Quality Rater Guidelines
If a page lacks a beneficial purpose,
it should always be rated Lowest Page
Quality regardless of the page's Needs
Met rating or how well-designed the
page may be.

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Discovery
Discovery is oftentimes bundled in to, and
seen as the same process as crawling.
Even in Google’s own Docs, it’s under the
“Crawling” heading, and outlined as This
process is called “URL discovery”

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Discovery
For the most part, most websites don’t need to
worry about the Discovery.
Brands who produce strong content, have “brand
gravitas”, and nurture all canonical signals are
“ok”.
Discovery issues manifest themselves as indexing
issues. Indexing issues cause other “symptoms”,
the wider business notices these…

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Discovery
URLs can get stuck in discovery based on
site assumptions/pattern assumptions.
New websites and less authoritative websites
could easily see Discovery phases lasting
longer, or when targeting queries and terms
not wholly within the typical wheelhouse.

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15. Influencing
Discovery

16. Canonical
Signals
Onsite &
Technical
Content
“Quality”

17. Duplicates
XML
Sitemap
Inclusion
Internal
Links
External
Links
Alternates
URL Length
Domain
Level
Signals
Redirects
Content
Origin
Google
User Data
Gary Illyes, SEO Day 2022 - Information reported by Patrick Stox 🙏

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Onsite & Technical
XML Sitemaps*
HTML Sitemaps
Internal linking* & anchor text consistency
Renderability/return of MC in DOM/plain HTML

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Onsite & Technical
Utilizing centralized and decentralized
website structures and user journeys
(internal linking, subfolders)
Monitoring the indexability of specific
subfolders & URL patterns
SF & URL pattern indexing segways nicely
into…

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Content Quality
EEAT, Beneficial Purpose (Page Quality),
Quality Thresholds, Source Types…
Not all beneficial purposes are bad - but
they tie to source type
Canonical Signals & Duplication (Value
Proposition)

21. E.E.A.T.
Satisfying MC
Beneficial
Purpose
Canonical
Signals
Obvious MC
Page Quality Hierarchy of Needs

22. Short term focus query, quick answers
User objective, to identify a channel
and time for a football match
Content freshness - high, published
hours before the event
RadioTimes ranking in position 1
(behind a FS, YouTube, and PAA)
[what channel is arsenal v molde]
173 Words!

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Quality Thresholds
Quality thresholds are composed of a number
of variables
The variables, and their weighting, differ
at query level, page level, and source type
level
E.g. “freshness” will matter more to some
queries than others

24. Thank you!
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profiles?
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@TaylorDanRW
@SALT_agency
https://salt.agency
https://dantaylor.online