Overview of guidelines

The guidelines provide advice on how to code your site in order to be eligible to appear on Google. These guidelines fall into the following categories:

Webmaster guidelines

The Webmaster guidelines are general best practices to help your site appear in Google Search, as well as quality guidelines that, if not followed, can cause your page or site to be omitted from Search.

General guidelines

The following general guidelines are best practices for having your site show up and look its best in Google.

Keep a simple URL structure Qualify your outbound links to Google Tag site for child-directed treatment Browser compatibility

Avoid creating duplicate content Make your links crawlable Make sure Googlebot is not blocked Best practices for website testing with Google Search

Content-specific guidelines

The following guidelines are additional tips for specific content types on your site, including images, video, AMP, AJAX, and mobile-friendly sites. For more information about general best practices, or how to enable specific features for your site, see the Search Appearance topic.

Google Image best practices Video best practices Rich media file best practices AMP on Google Search guidelines

Best practices for education sites in Google Search COVID-19 resources for sites from Google Search Design AJAX-powered sites for accessibility

Quality guidelines

The following guidelines describe specific prohibited techniques that can get your page or site omitted from Search results. Engaging in these techniques can incur a manual action for your site.

Automatically generated content Sneaky redirects Link schemes Paid links Cloaking Hidden text and links Doorway pages

Scraped content Affiliate programs Irrelevant keywords Creating pages with malicious behavior User-generated spam Ways to Prevent Comment Spam Report spam, paid links, or malware