In the latest episode of Digital Phablet’s Search Off the Record podcast, John Mueller from Google explained that blocking access to your internal search results pages is no longer a requirement listed in the Google Search Essentials guidelines. Nevertheless, he recommends maintaining the practice because not doing so can lead to increased server load and potential quality issues, especially if abused, which may negatively impact search rankings.
Mueller shared that in Google’s early webmaster guidelines, it was advised to block search results pages. These pages, often generated automatically or representing infinite spaces, were considered either automatically generated content or problematic for indexing. The guidelines then recommended blocking such pages to prevent issues.
Today, that recommendation isn’t explicitly in the official policies, but Mueller suggests that blocking these pages makes sense for technical reasons. Allowing search results pages to be indexed isn’t considered spam, but it can be highly inefficient, causing server strain and slowing down the crawling of your site.
Beyond efficiency, there’s a concern about security and content quality. If hackers gain access, search results pages might display irrelevant or inappropriate content, including adult material, spam, or even malicious links. This can lead Google to classify the site as hacked, potentially resulting in a ranking drop during such incidents.
Mueller highlighted that certain types of sites—like casinos, pharmaceutical companies, or adult content providers—should be particularly cautious. If these pages contain long, unrelated search strings, phone numbers, or spammy images, they might start appearing in search results for problematic queries, even if the site hasn’t been hacked. Such occurrences can trigger warning signals in Google Search Console, flagging the site as compromised.
Given these risks, it’s advisable to block Google from indexing your internal search pages. While Google used to explicitly recommend this in 2007, the current guidelines have shifted away from that specific directive, though the advice to block remains valuable for maintaining site integrity and performance.
This is a topic that has been discussed frequently in the industry—search for the relevant articles using the site’s search feature to explore more details.
Below is a video segment starting at the 17:10 mark, where Mueller discusses these issues.
[Video placeholder or description: The discussion covers the reasons why blocking internal search result pages is still a best practice, including server efficiency, security considerations, and content quality control.]
Forum discussion can be found on the related YouTube link.