Unable to enable Google indexing on external Confluence Instance

Question

Dear Support Team,

our external Confluence instance is supposed to provide free online documentation for our customers and prospects in regard to our software products.

Even though we grant anonymous public access, even though we installed a free SEO plugin (the only one there was on the Atlassian marketplace btw.) Google ignores our external Confluence instance.

Please tell us how we can become part of Google's crawling activity.

Thanks and best regards,

Vincent

Shannon S · Answer

Hi Vincent,

Thank you for confirming that! Hope the indexing goes smoothly.

Take care, and have a pleasant week.

Regards,

Shannon

Oxaion GmbH · Answer

Dear Shannon,

thank you so much for helping us out. We should have set up everything correctly now and will check Google indexing activity in the coming weeks.

BR

Vincent

Shannon S · Answer

Hello Vincent,

Welcome to Atlassian Community. It's nice to have you!

Google will index any site that isn't blocking it from access, such as with a firewall, internal network, or due to Confluence permissions.

Just to confirm, when you view your Confluence instance in Incognito or Private Browsing mode, you can completely see all of the pages in Confluence you intend for anonymous users? Are you able to access the site from outside of your local network?

If this is true, then there's no reason that Google wouldn't be able to index your site. It can take up to 4 weeks for Google to index a new site. Another option is to resubmit your site to Google.

If you continue to have issues, then you'll want to reach out to Google for assistance.

Regards,

Shannon