Updated Google App Indexing

Last year, in October the app indexing guidelines were announced by Google that helped in establishing a deep linking between our android apps and the Google search results. With the positive feedback from the users, the Google has enabled more than 20 additional applications which will soon feature app deep links in the search results. Presently, the app deep links are available globally for the English content. Google is said to make it available in all other languages very soon. For those who have not added the deep link feature to their sitemaps, websites and android apps, you can do so now and notify the Google here:

https://developers.google.com/app-indexing/webmasters/checklist

While adding deep links to your website, certain points should always be kept in mind – you can include the app deep links for only those URLs which are canonical. An app deep link for the homepage should be always specified. It is not necessary that each and every URL in a sitemap should include an app deep links. Also the unsupported links should not be added to the app. If you are running a news site that makes use of news sitemaps, always make sure that you include the link annotations in it as well as in the general sitemap. Deep links for executing the native Arm code should not be provided with the annotations. With this the app indexing should be able to support all the platforms.

When your app content is accessed by Google, it makes HTTP requests like usually, but these appear to the servers as if the source of origination is Googlebot. So you need to configure your robots. Txt server files properly to support these requests. Lastly make sure that the app’s ‘back’ button leads to the search results page.