Google advises against indexing sponsored products on category pages

The content of your site must be included in the Google index in order to appear in the search results. The Google index is comparable to a library’s index, which contains information on all of the books that the library has on hand. Similarly, the search engine’s indexing system lists all of the webpages that it is aware of. Google refreshes the index when it visits your site and identifies new and updated product category pages.

However, Google advises against indexing sponsored products on category pages.

Barry Schwartz took to Twitter to inquire about category pages with sponsored items. “Does Google want sites to make sure that such sponsored items aren’t indexed by Google?” Schwartz asked Google’s John Mueller.

“Some sites take care to avoid being indexed in various ways, which is probably a sensible practise,” John Mueller responded. Mueller just stated that making sure Google does not uncover the sponsored items on sponsored pages “is definitely a smart strategy. Here’s an example I gave, with cheese, of course:

To which John suggested that these are basically advertisements, similar to those seen on any website. Some websites take precautions to avoid being indexed in a variety of ways, which is usually a good idea. Robots.txt, for example, appears to prevent Adsense.