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Appendix C — Change ledger & citation map

The Technical SEO Reference · generated from ../research/citations/ · all fetch dates 2026-08-04

C.1 The 2024–2026 change ledger

The dated feature/policy/doc changes are distributed through the chapters and merged in Appendix B (deprecations) and each chapter's sources. The marquee changes that reshaped doctrine in this window:

Date Change Ch
Dec 2024 Crawling December series: WRS 30-day cache, resource crawl-budget billing, CDN crawl mechanics, faceted-navigation doc 6, 4, 10
Jan 2025 Breadcrumbs off mobile SERPs 10
Feb 2025 CrUX: LCP subparts, RTT; ECT retired 15
Mar–Jun 2025 Structured-data phase-outs announced (Jun 12 'Simplifying the search results page': seven types) 12
Sept 2025 SD mass doc removal 12
Nov 2025 Crawling docs migrate to /crawling/; CrUX Dashboard deprecated; practice-problems notice; Dataset clarification; GBP Q&A retired 2–5, 15, 12
Dec 2025 JS clarifications: noindex-skips-rendering, JS canonicals, non-200 render skips 6
Feb 2026 2MB Googlebot fetch limit documented; IP-range JSONs relocated 2, 5
Mar 2026 'Inside Googlebot' disclosures; preferred-image mechanism; Google-Agent; robots-meta outside-head note 2, 6, 14, 5, 7
Apr 2026 Chrome 147 HTTPS-by-default (ESB users) 17
May 2026 FAQ rich results effective end (May 7); Web Bot Auth experiment 12, 5
Jun 2026 FAQ docs removed (Jun 15); GSC gen-AI reports + toggle (Jun 3); site-move all-variants CoA rule (Jun 17) 12, 16, playbook
Jul 2026 Platform properties (Jul 7/29); canonicalization re-evaluation changelog (Jul 10); GeminiNotebook rename (Jul 14); review-snippet incentivized-review rule (Jul 24) 19, 8, 5, 12
Oct 2026 (scheduled) Chrome 154: HTTPS-by-default for all 17

C.2 URL-migration table

See Appendix B §B.4 — maintained there to keep one home.

C.3 Citation index

Every source cited in Chs 2–21, with the page's own last-updated stamp where shown. Re-verify at any press/audit pass — help-center pages expose no revision dates and can drift silently.

Source Page last-updated Cited in
Content Independence Day (Cloudflare, Jul 1, 2025) 2025-07-01 Ch 05
Introducing pay per crawl (Cloudflare, Jul 1, 2025) 2025-07-01 Ch 05
Perplexity is using stealth, undeclared crawlers to evade website no-crawl direc 2026-07-15 (modified; originally 2025-08-04) Ch 05
Forget IPs: using cryptography to verify bot and agent traffic 2026-07-15 Ch 05
New opportunities, control and insights for website owners (blog.google, Jun 3, 2026-06-03 Ch 05, Ch 07
HTTPS by default (Oct 28, 2025 — Chrome/Google security blog; security.googleblo 2025-10-28 Ch 17
CCBot - Common Crawl — Ch 05
RFC 9309: Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP) — IETF Proposed Standard, September 20 Published: September 2022 Ch 03
Amazonbot — Ch 05
CrUX overview 2024-02-08 Ch 15
CrUX API 2025-02-11 Ch 15
CrUX on BigQuery 2025-02-11 Ch 15
CrUX methodology 2024-06-20 Ch 15
CrUX dimensions 2025-02-11 Ch 15
CrUX metrics November 18, 2025 (footer 2025-11-28) Ch 15
CrUX release notes 2026-07-14 Ch 15
Reduce the impact of third-party code (Lighthouse) 2019-05-02 Ch 15
Does not have a tag (Lighthouse) 2024-05-27 Ch 15
Prerender pages in Chrome (Speculation Rules API) 2026-01-23 Ch 15
Meta web crawlers — Ch 05
Things to know about Google's web crawling 2026-03-03 UTC Ch 02, Ch 04
Crawling docs changelog — Ch 02, Ch 05
Optimize your crawl budget 2026-07-22 UTC Ch 02, Ch 04, Ch 10
Google's common crawlers 2026-07-14 Ch 05, Ch 14
Google's special-case crawlers 2026-02-11 Ch 03, Ch 05
Google's user-triggered fetchers 2026-07-16 Ch 03, Ch 05
Overview of Google crawlers and fetchers (user agents) 2026-06-12 UTC Ch 02, Ch 03, Ch 04, Ch 05
Reduce Google crawl rate 2025-12-18 UTC Ch 02, Ch 04, Ch 16
Verify requests from Google crawlers and fetchers 2026-03-20 Ch 05
Authenticate requests with Web Bot Auth (experimental) 2026-05-04 Ch 05
[Managing crawling of faceted navigation URLs Google Crawling docs (moved from ](https://developers.google.com/crawling/docs/faceted-navigation) 2025-12-18
Myths and facts about crawling 2025-12-18 UTC Ch 02, Ch 03
How to write and submit a robots.txt file 2025-11-21 Ch 03
How Google interprets the robots.txt specification 2026-07-08 Ch 03, Ch 04, Ch 05
Submit an updated robots.txt file 2025-11-21 Ch 03
List of useful robots.txt rules 2026-06-12 Ch 03
Debug DNS and network errors 2025-12-18 UTC Ch 02, Ch 04
How HTTP status codes affect Google's crawlers 2026-02-04 UTC Ch 02, Ch 04, Ch 07, Ch 16
[Indexing API Quickstart Google for Developers](https://developers.google.com/search/apis/indexing-api/v3/quickstart) 2026-07-16 UTC
To infinity and beyond? No! (Google Search Central Blog) 2008-08-05 (post date) Ch 04
[Handling legitimate cross-domain content duplication Google Search Central Blo](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2009/12/handling-legitimate-cross-domain) —
To slash or not to slash (Google Search Central Blog, Apr 21, 2010 — still live) 2010-04-21 Ch 10
HTTPS as a ranking signal (blog, Aug 2014 — historical) August 2014 Ch 15, Ch 17
Google's handling of new top level domains — Google Search Central Blog (John Mu — Ch 11
Deprecating our AJAX crawling scheme 2015-10-14 Ch 06
Indexing HTTPS pages by default (Dec 2015) — Ch 17
[Consolidating your website traffic on canonical URLs Google Search Central Blo](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2019/02/consolidating-your-website-traffic-on) —
[Bye Bye Preferred Domain setting Google Search Central Blog (Jun 18, 2019)](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2019/06/bye-bye-preferred-domain-setting) —
A note on unsupported rules in robots.txt (Google Search Central Blog, July 2019 — Ch 03
New robots tag: indexifembedded (Google Search Central Blog) 2022-01-21 Ch 07
[Spring cleaning: the URL Parameters tool Google Search Central Blog (Mar 28, 2](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/03/url-parameters-tool-deprecated) —
The role of page experience in creating helpful content (blog, April 19, 2023) April 19, 2023 (with Nov 8, 2023 and Jan 31, 2024 update notes) Ch 15
[Sitemaps ping endpoint is going away Google Search Central Blog (Gary Illyes, ](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2023/06/sitemaps-lastmod-ping) Posted Monday, June 26, 2023; banner: "The sitemaps ping endpoint deprecation is complete."
Mobile-first indexing has landed - thanks for all your support (blog, Oct 31, 20 October 31, 2023 Ch 15
Upcoming deprecation of Crawl Rate Limiter Tool in Search Console posted 2023-11-24 Ch 02, Ch 16
Mobile-indexing-vLast-final-final.doc (blog, June 3, 2024) June 3, 2024 Ch 15
[Farewell, Sitelinks Search Box Google Search Central Blog](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/10/sitelinks-search-box) 2024-10
Crawling December: HTTP caching (Gary Illyes) posted 2024-12-09 Ch 02
Crawling December: CDNs and crawling (Martin Splitt & Gary Illyes) posted 2024-12-24 Ch 02, Ch 04, Ch 16
Crawling December: Faceted navigation (Google Search Central Blog, Gary Illyes, 2024-12-17 Ch 10
Crawling December: The how and why of Googlebot crawling posted 2024-12-03, in-post update 2024-12-06 Ch 02, Ch 04, Ch 06
Simplifying the visible URL element on mobile search results (Google Search Cent 2025-01-23 Ch 10
Inside Googlebot: demystifying crawling, fetching, and the bytes we process 2026-03-31 Ch 06
New Location for the Google Crawlers' IP Range Files (Search Central Blog, Mar 3 2026-03-31 Ch 05
Platform properties roll out globally, plus a new social and video performance g — Ch 14
AI features and your website 2025-12-10 Ch 05, Ch 07, Ch 12
Intrusive dialogs and interstitials 2025-12-10 Ch 15
Core Web Vitals (Search Central) 2025-12-10 Ch 15
Enable Web Stories on Google 2026-07-01 UTC Ch 14
Define a Favicon to Show in Search Results 2026-02-04 UTC Ch 14
Google Discover and Your Website 2026-03-09 UTC Ch 14
Google Image SEO Best Practices 2026-03-02 UTC Ch 14
Understanding page experience in Google Search results 2025-12-10 Ch 15, Ch 17
Publication dates (byline dates) 2025-12-10 Ch 13
A guide to Google Search ranking systems 2025-12-10 Ch 15
Site names 2025-12-10 Ch 13
Sitelinks 2025-12-10 Ch 13
Snippets and meta descriptions 2026-04-20 Ch 13
[Schema Markup Testing Tool Google Search Central](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data) —
[Book Actions Structured Data Google Search Central](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/book) 2025-12-10
Breadcrumb (BreadcrumbList) structured data 2025-12-10 Ch 10
[Structured data carousels (beta) Google Search Central](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/carousels-beta) 2026-01-21
[Fact Check (ClaimReview) Structured Data Google Search Central](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/factcheck) 2025-12-10
Generate structured data with JavaScript 2025-12-10 Ch 06, Ch 12
Image Metadata in Google Images (Licensable) 2025-12-10 UTC Ch 14
[Intro to How Structured Data Markup Works Google Search Central](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/intro-structured-data) 2025-12-10
[Local Business (LocalBusiness) Structured Data Google Search Central](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/local-business) 2025-12-10
Merchant listing structured data — Google Search Central — Ch 11
[Organization (Organization) Structured Data Google Search Central](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/organization) 2026-04-15
[General Structured Data Guidelines Google Search Central](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/sd-policies) 2026-07-10
Structured Data Markup that Google Search Supports (search gallery) 2026-06-15 Ch 12
Video (VideoObject, Clip, BroadcastEvent, SeekToAction) Structured Data 2026-02-13 UTC Ch 14
Title links 2025-12-10 Ch 13
Translated results in Google Search — Google Search Central Last updated 2025-12-10 UTC Ch 11
Video SEO Best Practices 2025-12-18 UTC Ch 14
[Redirects and Google Search Google Search Central](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/301-redirects) 2026-04-14
Block Search indexing with noindex 2025-12-10 Ch 07
[What is URL canonicalization Google Search Central](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/canonicalization) 2026-07-10
[Fix canonicalization issues Google Search Central](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/canonicalization-troubleshooting) 2026-07-10
[How to specify a canonical with rel="canonical" and other methods Google Searc](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/consolidate-duplicate-urls) 2026-07-10
Control what you share with Google 2025-12-10 Ch 07
Googlebot 2026-02-03 UTC Ch 02, Ch 06
File types indexable by Google (301 target of support.google.com/webmasters/answ 2026-02-03 UTC Ch 02
Dynamic rendering as a workaround 2025-12-10 Ch 06
Fix search-related JavaScript problems 2025-12-18 Ch 06
Understand the JavaScript SEO basics 2026-03-04 Ch 06, Ch 07
Fix lazy-loaded content 2025-12-10 Ch 06, Ch 10, Ch 14
Large site owner's guide to managing your crawl budget 2026-07-22 Ch 03, Ch 09, Ch 16
SEO best practices for links 2025-12-10 Ch 06, Ch 10
Mobile site and mobile-first indexing best practices 2025-12-10 Ch 15
Temporarily pause or disable a website Last updated 2025-12-10 UTC. Ch 16
Prevent Images on Your Page from Appearing in Search Results (moved from /search 2025-12-10 UTC Ch 14
Remove a page hosted on your site from Google 2025-12-10 Ch 07
Robots meta tag, data-nosnippet, and X-Robots-Tag specifications 2026-03-24 Ch 06, Ch 07, Ch 14
Introduction to robots.txt 2025-12-10 Ch 03, Ch 07
Old robots.txt spec URL (redirect check only) — Ch 03
SEO Guidelines for Explicit Content (SafeSearch) 2025-12-10 UTC Ch 14
Changing your hosting (site move with no URL changes) Last updated 2025-12-10 UTC. Ch 16
Site moves with URL changes 2026-06-17 UTC Ch 02, Ch 16, Ch 17
[Build and submit a sitemap Google Search Central](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/sitemaps/build-sitemap) 2026-07-08 UTC
[Combining sitemap extensions Google Search Central](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/sitemaps/combine-sitemap-extensions) 2025-12-10 UTC
[Image sitemaps Google Search Central](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/sitemaps/image-sitemaps) 2025-12-10 UTC
[Manage your sitemaps with a sitemap index file Google Search Central](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/sitemaps/large-sitemaps) 2025-12-10 UTC
[News sitemaps Google Search Central](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/sitemaps/news-sitemap) 2025-12-10 UTC
[What is a sitemap? Google Search Central](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/sitemaps/overview) 2025-12-10 UTC
[Video sitemaps and alternatives Google Search Central](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/sitemaps/video-sitemaps) 2026-05-20 UTC
Troubleshoot Google Search crawling errors 2025-12-18 UTC Ch 02
[URL structure best practices for Google Google Search Central](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/url-structure) 2025-12-10
Verify requests from Google crawlers and fetchers 2026-03-20 UTC Ch 17
Minimize A/B testing impact in Google Search Last updated 2025-12-10 UTC. Ch 16
Spam policies for Google web search 2026-05-15 UTC Ch 04, Ch 08, Ch 16, Ch 17
AI optimization: how to optimize for Google Search's generative AI features 2026-07-10 Ch 05, Ch 12
In-depth guide to how Google Search works 2025-12-18 UTC Ch 02
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide 2025-12-10 Ch 10
Malware and unwanted software 2025-12-10 UTC Ch 17
Preventing malware infection 2025-12-10 UTC Ch 17
Google Safe Browsing Repeat Offenders Policy 2025-12-10 UTC Ch 17
Social engineering (phishing and deceptive sites) 2025-12-10 UTC Ch 17
Designing a URL structure for ecommerce websites 2025-12-10 Ch 10
Help Google understand your ecommerce website structure 2025-12-10 Ch 10
Pagination, incremental page loading, and Search 2025-12-10 Ch 06, Ch 10
Overview of international and multilingual site topics — Google Search Central — Ch 11
How Google crawls locale-adaptive pages — Google Search Central Last updated 2025-12-10 UTC Ch 11
[Localized versions of your pages Google Search Central](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/specialty/international/localized-versions) 2025-12-22
Managing multi-regional and multilingual sites — Google Search Central Last updated 2025-12-10 UTC Ch 11
Google Search Central documentation updates (Dec 18, 2025 entry) — Ch 02, Ch 03, Ch 05, Ch 07, Ch 08, Ch 09, Ch 10, Ch 11, Ch 12, Ch 14, Ch 15, Ch 16
About PageSpeed Insights 2024-10-21 Ch 15
Google Public DNS — Frequently Asked Questions (DNSSEC section) (no date shown) Ch 04
OpenAI bots (platform.openai.com/docs/bots 301s here) — Ch 05
Perplexity crawlers (PerplexityBot, Perplexity-User) — Ch 05
Google robots.txt parser and matcher library (open source) — Ch 03
HSTS Preload List Submission (Chrome-run) — Ch 17
The /llms.txt file proposal 2024-09-03 Ch 05
The Open Graph Protocol (STANDARD — originally created at Facebook) — Ch 14
Google Safe Browsing — Ch 17
Search Off the Record — SEO summer: index waves, sandboxes, and more! (official 2020-08-25 Ch 06
About Applebot - Apple Support — Ch 05
Does Anthropic crawl data from the web, and how can site owners block the crawle 2026-04-07 Ch 05
Report Content for Legal Reasons — Ch 07
Announcements - Publisher Center Help "An update on publication pages" published April 25, 2024 (updated December 18, 2024) Ch 09
Google News transitions to automatically-generated publication pages - Publisher Published February 10, 2025; Updated March 20, 2025 Ch 09
Help Google News discover your web crawled content - Publisher Center Help — Ch 09
Avoid article duplication in Google News - Publisher Center Help — Ch 08
News content across Google - Publisher Center Help — Ch 09
Appear on other News surfaces - Publisher Center Help — Ch 09
HTTPS report - Search Console Help — Ch 17
The International Targeting report is deprecated — Search Console Help — Ch 11
Search generative AI control - Search Console Help — Ch 05, Ch 07
Add a website property to Search Console (property types) (support.google.com shows no revision date) Ch 04
robots.txt report - Search Console Help — Ch 03
Page indexing report - Search Console Help — Ch 03, Ch 07, Ch 08
Rich Results Test (Search Console Help) — Ch 12
Sitemaps report - Search Console Help — Ch 09
Rich result status reports (Search Console Help) — Ch 12
URL Inspection tool (Search Console Help) — Ch 06, Ch 07, Ch 08, Ch 17
Security issues report - Search Console Help — Ch 17
Manual Actions report (Search Console Help) — Ch 12, Ch 17
Core Web Vitals report (Search Console Help) — Ch 15
Change of Address tool - Search Console Help — Ch 16
Video Indexing Report - Search Console Help — Ch 14
Crawl Stats report - Search Console Help — Ch 02, Ch 03, Ch 04
Removals and SafeSearch reports tool - Search Console Help — Ch 07, Ch 14
"This site may be hacked" message - Google Search Help — Ch 17
"This site may harm your computer" notification - Google Search Help — Ch 17
Refresh outdated content - Google Search Help — Ch 07
Search Off the Record — 9th episode, official Google transcript PDF (via goo.gle — Ch 08
How Google handles JavaScript throughout the indexing process (MERJ/Vercel) posted 2024-07-31 Ch 02, Ch 06
Clean and maintain your site 2015-01-01 UTC Ch 17
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) 2023-04-12 Ch 15
Enable HTTPS on your servers 2015-03-27 UTC Ch 17
First Input Delay (FID) 2024-10-06 Ch 15
Fix the cloaked keywords and links hack 2015-01-01 UTC Ch 17
Fix the gibberish hack 2015-01-01 UTC Ch 17
Fix the Japanese keyword hack 2015-01-01 UTC Ch 17
Fixing mixed content 2019-09-07 UTC Ch 17
Help, I think I've been hacked 2015-01-01 UTC Ch 17
Hacked with malware 2015-01-01 UTC Ch 17
How do I know if my site was hacked? 2015-01-01 UTC Ch 17
Identify the vulnerability 2015-01-01 UTC Ch 17
Interaction to Next Paint (INP) September 2, 2025 Ch 15
Why lab and field data can be different (and what to do about it) 2022-07-18 Ch 15
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) September 4, 2025 Ch 15
Optimize Cumulative Layout Shift 2025-02-07 Ch 15
Optimize Interaction to Next Paint 2025-09-02 Ch 15
Optimize Largest Contentful Paint March 31, 2025 Ch 15
Optimize long tasks December 19, 2024 Ch 15
Quarantine your site 2015-01-01 UTC Ch 17
Rendering on the web 2026-01-05 Ch 06
Request a review (hacked sites) 2015-01-01 UTC Ch 17
Top ways websites get hacked by spammers 2015-01-01 UTC Ch 17
Time to First Byte (TTFB) November 18, 2025 (page footer: 2025-11-28) Ch 15
Web Vitals October 31, 2024 Ch 15
What is mixed content? 2019-09-07 UTC Ch 17
Retired Google sitemaps ping endpoint (live response test) — Ch 09
[FAQ IndexNow.org](https://www.indexnow.org/faq) —
What Is Edge SEO & Why You Should Adopt It (Search Engine Journal, Dan Taylor) — 2018-12-19 (publication date) Ch 04
Google 404 vs 410 status codes (Mueller office-hours transcription, May 2018; re — Ch 02
Google's Gary Illyes On AI, Site Migrations, & 'SEO Is Dead' Claims (Search Engi — Ch 16
Google On How They Treat Subdomains vs Subdirectories In 2016 (Search Engine Rou 2016-08-04 (article date) Ch 04
sitemaps.org — Sitemaps XML protocol (v0.9) Last Updated: Monday, November 21, 2016 Ch 09
Taming AI content crawlers (The Register, Jul 30, 2024, Thomas Claburn) — carrie 2024-07-30 Ch 05
How to make your content shine on Google Search (Chrome Dev Summit 2019) — Split 2019-11-13 Ch 06
English Google Webmaster Central office-hours hangout (2017; Mueller on long-ter — Ch 07
English Google Webmaster Central office-hours hangout (May 2018; Mueller on 410 — Ch 07

224 unique sources. Chapters 18–21 cite additionally from live fetches recorded in their Sources sections (manual-actions help, spam policies, property types, bulk export, API limits, debugging-traffic-drops, prerender-pages, display-layer docs).