Does Anybody have problem with Google indexing of knowledge articles?

[Marek Stepien]

We have been using ServiceNow for some time (almost a year) and we have huge difficulties to get our articles indexed in google This hurts our business since it depends on having articles findable in Google. Can somebody share their experiences with getting Knowledge articles into Google search?

Our SEO identified 5 defects (design defects) and two missing functions in the Service Portal making google indexing difficult, if not impossible.  Strangely enough all of the defects in Service Portal were fixed (or not available) in the old serviceNow UI called CMS (Content Management System).  The defects and missing functions are as follows:

1. Constant URL - the same URL should point to the published article through the article's lifetime.
   This is the biggest defect.
   In out-of-the-box SN instance, the URLs point to a specific version of an article, as
   https://<instance>/csm?id=kb_article&sys_id=3fd44b8d1be10c1483cb86e9cd4bcbbf
   If the article is republished, there is a new sys_id to the published article which require a new URL, and the previous URL is absolete since it tries to access an outdated version.

2. Title of the article added to the HTML source code.
   It is possible to get the 'Title' into HTLM code only if having sys_id in the title, which is problem #1.
   If fixing problem #1 (with our own implementation) by removing sys_id with KB#, adding 'Title' is impossible.

3. Description added in the HTML source code.
   Even if this is documented, and there is a configuration for it, the function does not work.

4. Canonical URL in the HTML source code
   Not possible to add Canonical link, and not possible to get a fix for it.

5. Consistency of internal links within the portal. The internal links should use the canonical links.
   The Articles should be referred through the system with the URL that we want google to index. 

6. Title of the article added to the URL
   The function improves drastically google rating.
   This is not a defect, rather the function is missing in ServiceNow
   The title of the article is added to the URL itself, as in this article found on the Web:
   https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/troubleshooting-technote
   where the title of the article is "Troubleshooting technote".

  
7. Sitemap
   ServiceNow does not provide Sitemap.
   We implemented it on our own.
  

[Marek Stepien]

It was nice from the forum moderator to create a support ticket from my post. I appreciate it.

However we already opened 14 tickets on google issues. 

What we need is to resolve those issues and fix them soon. 

[dimple adlakha]

Any luck on issue one I have same issue as below -

Regarding Google Indexing .I have issue with knowledge articles . While seraching Kb articles on google it will show the Knowledge home page link rather the the kb article name or link . When click on the Knowledge home page it will redirect the home page of Knowledge but i want it to redirect the KB article . All the Kb articles are public 

[Marek Stepien · Accepted solution]

Let me update this forum chain. 
Google indexing is working well at our site now. 
However to get to this point we spent a lot of our programming resources, and we got a significant help from ServiceNow as well. 

We made a number of changes to get consistent and constant links to the articles at the service portal.  ServiceNow helped us with writing code for canonical links. We added this change a year ago, and I think this piece is added to the latest release. 

In Google Search Console, I see that via Google search we are getting around 4,000 click a day on working days, and this number is still growing. 
A year ago, we had almost zero click via Google. See the attached screen capture from Google Serach Console. 

[Amy12]

Hi @Marek Stepien, 

We are also facing the same issues with Google's indexing. Are you able to go into more details on the changes you made to get consistent and constant links to the articles on your portal?

Highly appreciated!

Thank you,

Amy