Can PDFs Be indexed on Google?
Yes, PDFs, just like any other page on your website can be indexed.
PDFs are non html pages meaning they are not like normal or standard pages of a website. This, however, does not stop Google from indexing and ranking PDF files.
Are images within PDF files indexed by Google?
No. Images within PDFs are not indexed.
If you want them indexed, you need to create them within a html page on your website.
What Should You Do if Your PDF is Not Being Indexed?
Recently, I encountered an issue with a PDF that was not discovered by Google for a week and a half. I tried requesting indexing a couple of times.
But that did not work.
What worked was I referenced the PDF from one of my other articles. So in short, I added an internal link from an old article to the PDF and in less than one hour, the PDF file was indexed and ranking on the search engine results page (SERP).
How Does Google Pick the Meta Data For PDFs?
Google picks data from either the title metadata within the file, or the anchor text of links pointing to the PDF file.
So, let’s say you have mentioned your PDF in another page on your site this way: “Jeder Agency SEO Course” and attached the PDF link to this phrase (anchor text), Google might pick that phrase as the meta title on the search engine results page.
However, I have noticed that Google also picks the title shown on the SERP from the H1 or the title within the PDF. So, take note of this as well.
Duplicate Content
If you have an html page that has the same data as a PDF you want indexed, it is best practice to declare the canonical URL, that is, tell Google which page is the main one so that they index that particular page.
If you do not do this, Google might see this as duplicate content, and you do not want that.
