Why it matters
Discovery works through links: the homepage links to sections, which link to further pages, and Google infers a page's importance from its internal links (how many point to it and how many steps it is from the homepage). A page reachable only through a sitemap is found slowly and attracts little crawl demand. For large sites, Google pointed to category hub pages rather than HTML sitemaps.
How to meet it
Link menus to category pages, category pages to sub-categories and sub-categories to every product or article, all with <a href>. Keep important pages within a few clicks of the homepage. Where not every item can be linked, list the rest in the XML sitemap or a Merchant Center feed as a supplement, not a replacement. Never let a page be reachable only through a canonical tag (DEV-CAN-04).
How to test it
Crawl from the homepage following only <a href> links and compare the result with the sitemap: sitemap URLs missing from the crawl are orphans. Check the click depth of key templates.
How Regensbot covers it
Decided automatically once Regensbot crawls your verified site.
The crawl is polite: sitemap first, one request per second per host. A problem it finds is definite, and “none found” passes only on a complete crawl.
Sources
Google documents02
- 01In-depth guide to how Google Search worksGoogle Search Central (opens in a new tab)
- 02Help Google understand your ecommerce website structureGoogle Search Central (opens in a new tab)
Claims in the knowledge base08
- D1-C040ConfirmedHow Search works and where's AI?Shown on screen
- D2-C005SourceWelcome to indexing day!Google's documentation
- D2-C006SourceWelcome to indexing day!Google's documentation
- D2-C820ConsistentWelcome to indexing day!Shown on screen
- D2-C003n/aWelcome to indexing day!Shown on screen
- D1-C067n/aHow crawling worksThe author's interpretation
- D2-C838ConsistentWelcome to indexing day!Said on stage
- D1-C202ConsistentHow Search works and where's AI?Said on stage
Claim IDs refer to the Search Central Live 2026 knowledge base. The knowledge base (opens in a new tab)
- Confirmed
- Google's documentation states the same thing.
- Consistent
- Google's documentation supports it without stating it.
- Source
- The claim is the cited document itself.
- n/a
- Nothing to verify: a quotation, framing, opinion or analysis.