Google not indexing PDF's

  • Unknown's avatar
    nbiron · Member ·

    Our site has been up for just about two years… We are a research firm and publish PDF’s regularly. We make the URL’s of the PDF’s open and after publication, always submit to Google to index via the search console. And, at times, will submit the URL’s multiple times over the period of months. We’ve tried just about everything, yet Google still has not indexed our PDF’s…

    Additionally:

    We optimize each pdf for web viewing, added meta data including things such as title, description, keywords, etc. and nothing.

    We’ve connected Google Site Kit that was recommended, that did nothing… Signed up for Yoast Premium and that did nothing.

    By searching site:3sixtyinsights.com filetype:pdf, I see a total of 9 pdf’s indexed out of 50+…

    Any help would be appreciated, we’ve tried just about everything and still cannot get Google to index our pdf’s.

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • Unknown's avatar
    cuellin · Member ·

    Hi there!

    It looks like you have tried many different ways of solving this problem.
    Have a look at this thread on google that apparently solved this issue for a user of WordPress, I’m not 100% sure if the solution is applicable for WordPress.com or WordPress.org but you can give it a try.
    https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/12205845/pdf-files-on-my-website-not-getting-indexed?hl=en

    This is the fix they are suggesting, they claim that the problem is with the robots.txt file. Note that they also recommend some actions using Yoast that you may have done before.

    The robots.txt file for a WordPress Site and Other Considerations

    It seems that you have a paid plan here, be sure to contact support from the email support so they can give you a direct answer, and if you have a Premium plan or above, live chat support would be best.

    Hope this helps.

  • staff-totoro · Staff ·

    Hi there,

    You are referring to the PDFs you have uploaded in your site’s media library, yes? Here is the most recent one I’ve found: https://3sixtyinsights.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/3Sixty-Insights-Research-Preview-HCM-and-Employee-Experience-BWSRP2233-Web.pdf

    To clarify, Google is able to index some PDFs but not others? Or is the issue that they will not index any PDFs at all?

    WordPress.com is optimized for SEO by default, so there is nothing on our end that would prevent files in your media library from being accessible to Google. I can confirm that is a public file and I don’t see anything unusual when I examine a few I chose at random.

    Have you reached out to Google Search Console support? I don’t see anything on this end that is causing an issue, but we are not expert in GSC and do not have any insight into their processes.

    Thanks for the additional info!

  • staff-totoro · Staff ·

    Hi again,

    I forgot to mention that this is the support forum for our free sites, but your Business Yearly Plan upgrade includes priority live chat support that you can access 24 hours a day (except major holidays)

    With this in mind you are encouraged to reach out to us here, and we can take a closer look at your issue in realtime. No need to wait for a reply in the forums: https://wordpress.com/help/contact

  • Unknown's avatar
    nbiron · Member ·

    Hi Jerry,

    In short, Google has only indexed 9 PDF’s out of more than 50… I guess, I’ll try to find how to reach out to the search console team.

    Thanks,

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