Google Stops Indexing Google Posts

Update August 4, 2011 If you have been reading and following this blog post, you may be interested in what I’ve uncovered. Although something appears to be posted from within Google+, it’s actually coming from Google Buzz, and that has a Google+ Plus URL. So, I am pretty convinced at this point that Google+ posts are not being indexed, only Google+ Profiles. Google Buzz posts are getting indexed, and they show up with a Google+ URL, so it’s confusing. But I am going back to my original theory here, that Google has stopped indexing Google+ posts.

Posting directly to Google Buzz, the post will get indexed within seconds on the Google search results. And it currently shows as if it’s posted to your Google+ account, but it’s not.

However, if you post something directly within Google+ at https://plus.google.com/ then that post will be posted on your Google+ profile page. So, if you want something to show up in Google’s real-time search, currently you need to post it to Google Buzz, and not to Google+.

I’m sure this may change in the future, but currently only posts from Google Buzz are getting indexed in the Google search results within seconds. If you post something on Google Buzz, it will then be posted to Google’s real-time search results. Posting to Google+ will NOT get it indexed in Google’s real-time search results, and I am “pretty sure” at this point that Google+ posts are not getting indexed.

Update August 3, 2011 I previously posted (original post shown below) that all of the Google+ Plus posts were not getting indexed. Google has, in fact, changed the title tags of posts recently, thus changing one of the ways that they can be found in Google’s search results. The following search will show them in the search results:

site:plus.google.com inurl:posts

At this time, it still appears that there are only about 100 Google+ Plus posts being indexed every hour or so. A hat tip goes out to Greg Boggs for pointing out some of the recent changes and keeping me updated.

So far, I have to admit that I am a pretty big fan of Google+, the new social network by Google. I’ve posted quit a bit about various Google+ features, posted a Google+ review, and even written about how to get your Google+ posts to show up well in the Google search results. But unfortunately that appears to have been stopped, by Google themselves. For some reason, without any sort of public notice, Google has stopped indexing Google+ Plus posts.

Take a look at the screen capture above and you will see what I mean. Google+ Plus posts that are marked as “Public” have traditionally been indexed in Google’s search results if they met certain criteria. It has been my observation that Google+ Plus public posts were treated as any other web page, whereas a page has to have enough unique content on it or be important enough to get indexed.

But Google, for whatever reason, has quietly decided to stop indexing their Google+ Plus posts, with no posts being indexed within the past week. I had previously observed that Google was indexing about 200 to 300 posts an hour, but that has now stopped. There are, by the way, still about 22,000 Google+ Plus posts indexed in Google. I am surprised that those posts have remained in the Google search engine index.

I did take a look at Google’s robots.txt file for Google+Plus, which is located here on their site. I’m curious to know why they would want to disallow indexing of the directory that they’re disallowing–which is an underscore. It appears that there is no content there in that directory, so why disallow it from indexing?

So, why would Google choose to stop indexing posts? After all, it is unique content that is being posted directly on Google’s own website. Why not take advantage of all that content? The posts were marked as “Public”, so I see no reason why they would want to stop indexing them.

My only speculation at this point is that Google may be getting ready to bring back the “real time” search results, as previously they had access to the Twitter firehose of Tweets, and were displaying them in real time in the search results. Once they open Google+ Plus to the public and more people continue to embrace Google+ as a social networking site, they may start indexing Google+ Plus posts. But for now, we’re left with only being able to use Google to search Google+ Plus profiles.

Don’t forget to add me on Google+.

Read What I’ve Written About Google+
How to Create a Google+ Page For Your Business
How to Get Your Google+ Posts Indexed in Google
Google Buys Illegal +.com Domain Name
Google Stops Indexing Google+ Posts
Why You Should Use Google+
How to Remove Circle Counts on Google+
How to Promote Your Personal Brand on Google+
Are Google+ and +1 Changing Web Marketing?
How to Increase Your Followers on Google+