A new bot label called Embedded index, allowing sites to give Google more guidance on what to index in search results.
Using this tag, you tell Google to only index the content on the page if it is embedded Via iframes and similar HTML tags.
The indexifembedded tag overrides the noindex tag.
This means you can use noindex to exclude entire URLs from search results, and apply the indexifembedded tag to make specific content indexable when embedded in another web page.
Google says it created this tag to address an issue affecting media publishers:
“…While they may want content to be indexed when embedded in third-party pages, they don’t necessarily want their own media pages to be indexed.”
When to use Indexifembedded tags
This new bots tag doesn’t work for many publishers because it works for content that has a separate URL for embedding purposes.
For example, the publisher of a podcast might have a web page dedicated to each podcast episode, each with its own URL.
Then there will be URLs directly to the media that other sites can use to embed the podcast on one of their pages.
Such a URL might be used when inserting a podcast episode as a reference source, as I recently wrote about Googlebot crawl.
Podcast creators may not want media URLs to be indexed in search results. Previously, the only way to exclude them from Google searches was to use the noindex tag.
However, the noindex tag prevents content from being embedded in other pages during indexing. Therefore, if publishers want to allow embedding, they are also forced to index the media URLs.
Now, with the indexifembedded tag, publishers have more control over what’s indexed.
The indexifembedded tag can be used in conjunction with the noindex tag, which will override it when a URL with noindex is embedded in another page via an iframe or similar HTML tag.
Google provides the following examples:
“For example, if podcast.host.example/playpage?podcast=12345 has both the noindex and indexifembedded tags, it means that Google can embed content hosted on that page during indexing in recipe.site.example/my-recipes.html. “
How to use Indexifembedded tags
There are two ways to use this new robots tab.
To have your content indexed only when embedded in other pages, add the indexifembedded tag in conjunction with the noindex tag.
See the code example in the image below:
Alternatively, you can specify tags in HTTP headers.
See the image below for an example of what it looks like.
Screenshot from: developers.google.com/search/blog/, January 2022.Currently, only Google supports the indexifembedded tag.
source: Google Search Center Blog
Featured image: Igor Golovniov/Shutterstock
