CODEWITHSUNDEEP
androidandroid-app-indexinggoogle-app-indexingfirebase-app-indexing
busylee
busylee

Reputation: 2560

Android App Content Indexing

I am confused a little bit about app indexing.

First of all there is ability for android app to handle link to your website to open inside app, called deep linking. Just describe correct intent filters in manifest and handle calls inside activity and it is all.

But there is ability to indexing app content by Googlebot. In this way we use site to specify what to index, and after all there will be app pages on google search.

My question is: it is enough just to specify association site with app on sitemap or in tags on pages to show my app pages in google search, or it is strictly recommended to use FIrebase App Indexing for this.

And another one question is: documentation says "Typically, you control how Googlebot crawls publicly accessible URLs on your site by using a robots.txt file. When Googlebot indexes your app content, your app might make HTTP requests as part of its normal operations. However, these requests will appear to your servers as originating from Googlebot. Therefore, you must configure your server's robots.txt file properly to allow these requests." (at the bottom of page https://developer.android.com/training/app-indexing/enabling-app-indexing.html#robots)

How does Googlebot indexing pages under the hood, why it tries to go to blabla/api (mb needed to my app implementation) if it just goes through the site and its association, of it launch my app and do something under the hood?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 219

Answers (1)

Alejandro Núñez
Alejandro Núñez

Reputation: 712

I haven't found information about how Google indexes the apps, but apparently it performs some checks on published APKs in Google Play while indexing.

In Google Search Console's "Fetch as Google" section for your app, where you can test your deep links, it displays the following message:

Fetch results don’t reflect the following crawl errors: First click free violation, back button violation, or content mismatch violation.

So apparently Google checks your app while indexing it, to prevent developers tricks and ensure you use App Indexing as intended: to provide your website's content, but in your app.

Upvotes: 0

Related Questions