How does Google crawl interactive info databases with user-preferred elements?
Anyone seen how Google handles crawling databases that let users build lists of preferred info, like favorite authors or web pages? I have a site where users create their own collections, but most of the content is only visible after login or through interactive UI. Not sure how crawl budget is affected or if Googlebot can access this stuff at all.
Asked by ramzanali
1 Answer
Googlebot cannot crawl anything behind a login or content hidden behind interactive elements like user dashboards or AJAX-loaded lists, so your user-created collections are basically invisible to search engines unless you make some public, crawlable version. If you want those collections indexed, you need to create public URLs for each collection that are accessible without login and linked from other crawlable pages, even if it's just a user profile. Make sure those pages don't require JS to render core content, since Googlebot gets stuck on heavy JS and might not see the lists at all. Crawl budget won't really be affected unless you suddenly make thousands of new public pages, but even then, as long as they're well-linked, Google will pick them up over time.