Google\u2019s John Mueller recently discussed how Google processes PDFs for ranking purposes, how it indexes them for use in AI Mode and regular search, and why it is able to use links in PDFs the same as it does for regular HTML web pages.<\/p>\n
PDFs Are Converted To HTML<\/p>\n
Google\u2019s Martin Splitt explained that Google uses a converter to transform PDFs into HTML, and then it indexes the HTML conversion, not the actual PDF. He also expressed uncertainty about whether images in PDFs do or do not get indexed. He appeared to lean toward the possibility that they do not get indexed and said that this state may change at some point in the future.<\/p>\n
He explained:<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd what we do is we are not using a PDF viewer. \u2026What we are doing in Search is we have a component called a converter. And the converter component is part of what happens in indexing. It happens right after rendering and right before something potentially makes it into the index.<\/p>\n
One of the things we do is we look at the format. We have converters for a bunch of different formats, such as rich text files, document files, Excel sheets, and Lotus Notes documents for some reason. But also one of them is a PDF converter. So we are taking that and producing an HTML version of it so that the processing in the rest of the pipeline pretty much only works with HTML.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s obviously excluding images and videos and yada yadayada\u2014those go to slightly different pipelines\u2014but the normal web pipeline pretty much uses HTML for everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
Later on he explained how Google handles images in PDFs:<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we might actually pick them up. I\u2019m not sure how we would process them because the way that we normally process them is that we give the URLs of the image to the image search pipeline that then works with this.<\/p>\n
Here we don\u2019t really have a URL because it\u2019s part of the PDF. So I think we understand there is an image, but I don\u2019t think we can actually process it like a normal image for image search. But that might change or might have changed; that\u2019s my current understanding of how that pipeline works.\u201d<\/p>\n
Links Work In PDF Files<\/p>\n
Google also confirmed that links embedded within PDFs function like links because it\u2019s the HTML version of the PDF that gets indexed, which includes the links which can be followed like normal links.<\/p>\n
John Mueller remarked:<\/p>\n
\u201cSo basically when Google sees a PDF file, it converts it into something that it has more practice with, kind of a web page. And I guess that\u2019s also why things like links also work in PDF files.\u201d<\/p>\n
Splitt responded:<\/p>\n
\u201cYep. Because we convert it into an HTML page and then the rest of our systems are like, \u201cI know how to deal with an HTML page,\u201d and they just do their stuff.<\/p>\n
\u2026So a lot of stuff can be embedded in a PDF. And when we convert it, we convert it to a representation in HTML that is as true as is possible to that original format. So we can see things like links, for instance, from PDFs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Google\u2019s PDF Size Limits<\/p>\n
Google\u2019s Mueller acknowledged that they don\u2019t know everything and that they\u2019re trying to explain PDF indexing and ranking according to what they do know.<\/p>\n
He asked about PDF file size limits.<\/p>\n
\u201cI realize some of these things maybe we just don\u2019t know the details, so we\u2019re kind of trying to extrapolate from what we do know. Do you know with regards to limits, like size limits, how that works with PDFs?\u201d<\/p>\n
Splitt answered that the file limit for PDFs is larger the way that video size limits are larger, but that he didn\u2019t know the exact limit. He added that he believed that normal HTML limits apply once the PDF is converted, which is useful information.<\/p>\n
He explained:<\/p>\n
\u201cProbably fetching the PDF has a different limit than the web page limit, but probably there\u2019s a limit for the web page kind of representation.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not so sure where these limits are applied. I know that the HTML limits that we recently discussed on the podcast and in documentation as well come from the crawling component of the pipeline. So when we crawl them, as we have to crawl a PDF document and PDFs can be really large, I assume that we have a larger file limit, just the same as we do for videos and images. But I don\u2019t know the specific limit for PDF files.\u201d<\/p>\n
Later on Splitt said that whatever the size limit is at today could change in the future if they detect that people are publishing larger PDFs.<\/p>\n
PDFs Can Rank In Search And AI Mode<\/p>\n
Martin Splitt also confirmed that PDFs can rank in AI Mode for the same reason it can rank in regular search. Google converts the files to HTML then indexes it like that.<\/p>\n
But he also mentioned that not all PDFs can rank for the text because some PDFs are like images. He suggested that if you can highlight and copy the text from the PDF to a text file then Google will be able to convert the PDF to HTML for ranking purposes.<\/p>\n
Splitt explained Google\u2019s PDF rankings in response to the question of whether site publishers should create PDFs:<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, sure, if your content warrants it. Like if you have specific formatting requirements, or if you need this stuff to look really, really specific in print, or if you need interactive things like forms.<\/p>\n
So if you are running a holiday lodge and you are publishing a form that makes it easier for you to process people who are registering to stay at your holiday lodge, then absolutely do this as a PDF if it helps you.<\/p>\n
Obviously HTML is a really flexible format and I prefer that, but if you have a PDF for whatever reason, go for it. Restaurants oftentimes have the printers create the menus that they actually physically print on paper as a PDF as well, and you can just upload that to your website. It\u2019s better than not having your menu on the website at all.<\/p>\n
\u2026indexing and ranking is pretty much the same as any other document.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mueller added:<\/p>\n
\u201cSo they can also appear in AI overviews, AI mode, all of those things.\u201d<\/p>\n
HTML Is Probably Better For SEO Than PDF<\/p>\n
Later on in the podcast Mueller expressed that regular HTML is likely better for ranking purposes. That does not diminish the ranking power of PDFs, but there\u2019s a pragmatic angle about making it easier for search engines to rank web documents.<\/p>\n
He first expressed this idea in talking about Menus:<\/p>\n
\u201cI see it a bit pragmatically. If the option is have a menu as a PDF or don\u2019t have a menu at all,then yes, I would prefer to have a menu. But if the option is menu as a PDF versus a normal web page, I kind of like normal web pages because it\u2019s easier to interact with them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then later on he referred to Martin\u2019s comment about the indexability of PDFs:<\/p>\n
\u2026From an SEO point of view, if it\u2019s indexable text\u2014if you try that trick that Martin mentioned, selecting everything and putting it into a text editor\u2014then we can use it for search. It\u2019s not that from an SEO point of view it\u2019s impossible.<\/p>\n
Then further on he expressed the idea that if a site owner can do it in HTML then to do that:<\/p>\n
\u2026if you have something that you can put into HTML and it\u2019s just the same as your PDFs, that makes everything a little bit easier.\u201d<\/p>\n
That last point about making it a little bit easier gets to the fundamental heart of what SEO is all about, which is making it easy for search engines to crawl and index website content.<\/p>\n
Listen to the Search Off The Record Podcast here:<\/p>\n
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