If you’ve ever stared at your website analytics wondering why Google isn’t indexing your pages—or what to actually prioritize in your SEO strategy—you’re not alone. That’s why Search Central Live Deep Dive, which took place over three days last week, gave us some clarity straight from the source: Google.
Here are our biggest takeaways from the event and how they can impact your SEO game moving forward.
Indexing Signals: What Actually Gets Your Page Indexed?
Google made it clear: just because your site performed well in the past doesn’t mean it’s set up for future success. With Search and AI systems evolving, a technically sound, user-friendly website is non-negotiable. It’s important to keep your foundation strong. That includes fast load times, mobile responsiveness, clean architecture, and reliable server performance.
It was recommended to continue to use Google Search Console regularly to track indexing, core vitals, coverage issues, and everything else that keeps your SEO in shape. It’s a great resource for tracking indexing issues, Core Web Vitals, sitemap status, and more.
Google’s Gary Illyes (Analyst on theGoogle Search team) clearly broke down which factors directly influence indexing, not just ranking. That’s an important distinction, because a page that doesn’t get indexed will never show up in search, no matter how well-optimized it is.
It’s also worth noting that Google doesn’t just index written content. Multimedia matters too. Google processes and evaluates images and videos as part of a page’s content. That means best practices for image optimization—like using descriptive alt text and compressing image sizes—can influence how quickly and accurately your visuals are indexed. For video content, providing transcripts and using structured data can potentially enhance visibility and indexing.
Here’s what Google does consider when deciding whether to index a page:
- Country & Language: Geolocation and language clarity are key. If your site has international audiences, consider hreflang tags and localized content.
- HTTPS: Secure sites (those using HTTPS) are prioritized for indexing over HTTP sites.
- Core Web Vitals: These performance metrics—like load time and interactivity—can affect whether your page gets indexed at all.
- Links (Dofollow): Pages that are linked to from other sites are more likely to be discovered and indexed.
- Freshness: Google prefers content that is updated regularly, especially on time-sensitive topics.
- Spam Violations: If your site violates Google’s spam policies, it can lead to deindexing or outright exclusion from search results.
What Doesn’t Affect Indexing (Even If It’s Good for SEO)
These factors may help your content rank better, but they don’t influence whether Google chooses to index a page:
- Domain age or history
- Structured data or schema markup
- XML sitemaps
- Crawlability (helps discovery, not indexing)
- Link velocity
- Internal linking logic
- Readability or content depth
- Matching intent
- Keywords in H1 tags
- EEAT principles (Experience, Expertise, Authority, Trust)
In short: You can have a perfectly structured, keyword-optimized page with all the schema and internal links in the world—but if it’s not meeting the actual signals Google uses for indexation, it may still get skipped.
Crawl Budget and Response Codes
Gary Illyes made it clear that one of the most overlooked but critical issues affecting indexing is the presence of soft 404s:
“A page that returns a 200 OK status code but displays an error message or has very thin/empty main content is considered a “soft 404.” Google actively identifies and de-prioritizes these pages as they waste crawl budget and provide a poor user experience. Illyes shared that for years, Google’s own documentation page about soft 404s was flagged as a soft 404 by its own systems and couldn’t be indexed.”
For business owners, this means that even if a page appears to be “working” (technically returning a 200 OK status code), it may still be ignored by Google if it lacks meaningful content or serves as a dead end for users. Think of a product page that says “Out of stock” with no additional info, or a landing page with almost no text or functionality—Google sees these as unhelpful.
Soft 404s are especially dangerous because they silently eat into your crawl budget. That means Google might skip crawling or indexing more important pages on your site if it’s spending time reviewing low-value ones. Regularly auditing for thin content, placeholder pages, or outdated listings is essential to avoid this issue.
Illyes clarified that only 5XX errors—like server failures—actively reduce your crawl budget. Meanwhile, 4XX errors (like broken links or missing pages) don’t directly impact crawl budget, but they can influence how often or efficiently Googlebot returns to your site. The cleaner your technical foundation, the better Google can understand and prioritize your content.
Fix server issues quickly and streamline your site structure to help Googlebot navigate and crawl the most valuable pages. Broken links or slow response times can slow down the overall crawl process, making it harder for Google to get through your content efficiently. The more roadblocks Googlebot encounters, the less likely it is to crawl your most important pages regularly.
AI Content Needs Human Oversight
Another major theme echoed throughout Search Central Live: AI can be helpful, but it’s not a replacement for human expertise.
AI models are essentially prediction machines—they don’t “know” facts, they predict what text should come next based on patterns in the data they were trained on. They can also make things up (a.k.a. hallucinate), even when it sounds plausible.
For businesses, especially those in YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) industries like health, wellness, finance, and law, this is critical. Any content generated with AI must be reviewed, edited, and validated by a human before it goes live. It’s not just about factual accuracy—it’s about responsibility.
If your content can impact someone’s well-being or decision-making, it should pass through a qualified human lens. That’s how you build trust, credibility, and long-term SEO success.
Ranking & Retrieval: Why Main Content Matters Most
Google’s systems heavily prioritize the “main content”—what Gary Illyes referred to as the “centerpiece”—when evaluating a page for ranking and retrieval.
So what counts as main content?
According to Search Central:
“Main Content is any part of the page that directly helps the page achieve its purpose. MC can be text, images, videos, page features (e.g., calculators, games), and it can be content created by website users, such as videos, reviews, articles, comments posted by users, etc.”
Illyes emphasized that words in the main body of a page carry significantly more weight than words in the header, footer, or sidebar. That means where you place your important content matters.
How Google Analyzes Content Location
Google performs positional analysis of the rendered webpage to identify the location of different content sections. The goal here is to assign more importance to words found in the “main content” area.
This isn’t about keyword positioning for SEO in the old-school sense. It’s about helping Google understand your page layout so it can determine which words matter most.
As SEO expert Kenichi Suzuki summarized:
“Moving a term from a low-importance area (like a sidebar) to the main content area will directly increase its weight and potential to rank.”
Local SEO Tips from Google Search Central Live
Targeting the right audience in the right region takes more than just setting a location in your footer. Google shared several technical tips to help reinforce your geographic targeting—especially useful for businesses focused on local SEO or international visibility:
- Country-Code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs): Domains like .uk, or .au send signals about your site’s regional focus.
- Hreflang Annotations: Use <link> tags, HTTP headers, or sitemap entries to declare language and regional versions of your content. This helps Google serve the right content to the right audience.
- Server Location: Hosting your site on a server located in your target region can provide a helpful geographic hint—particularly when paired with other local signals.
- On-Page and Off-Page Localization: Reinforce your regional relevance with indicators like local language and currency, links from regional websites, and a well-maintained Google Business Profile.
When all of these pieces work together, they help Google understand where you should rank—not just what for.
Schema: Use it Strategically
Schema markup can help Google better understand what your content is about and how it relates to other entities—especially as large language models (LLMs) and AI-driven results continue to evolve. It’s useful for powering enhanced search features like rich snippets and can support more accurate content interpretation.
But let’s be real: more isn’t always better.
Overloading your site with redundant or excessive schema does nothing for rankings and can actually bloat your code. Google doesn’t use schema as a direct ranking factor, so focus on quality, not quantity. Use it to clarify things on your site, not clutter it up.
Technical SEO Tip: Use Semantic HTML for Clarity
To make your site less ambiguous for search engines, implement semantic HTML.
Using proper HTML5 elements helps Google understand which parts of your page are:
- <main> for your core content
- <header>, <footer>, <nav> for layout and navigation
- <aside> for secondary or related content
- <section> and <article> to define and organize content meaningfully
This technique, known as disambiguation, is a powerful way to ensure your most important content gets the attention it deserves.
How Google Search Is Evolving
Search isn’t what it used to be, and neither are your customers. Google shared data showing how user behavior is shifting in real time.
Searches Are Getting Longer
Users are typing longer, more natural-sounding queries. In fact, searches with five or more words are growing 1.5x faster than shorter queries. This means optimizing for how people talk, not just how they type, is essential for modern SEO.
Gen Z Is Skipping the Search Bar
Google reported that around 10% of Gen Z search journeys now begin with AI-powered features like voice or image search.. If your content only caters to traditional keyword-based searches, you’re missing a growing chunk of the audience.
Source: Search Engine Journal
Key Takeaway from Search Central Live: SEO is Here to Stay
Insights from Search Central Live highlight some important factors to consider when aiming to show up in search. .
We were also reminded of something important: SEO isn’t going anywhere. The landscape evolves—first JavaScript, then mobile-first, now AI—but the core mission stays the same: create high-quality content that helps real people. If you’re focused on solving problems and meeting searcher intent, your strategy will stand the test of time.
If you’re ready to future-proof your SEO, now’s the time. Book a free strategy call with our team at Well Optimized SEO and let’s make your website work harder for your business.
