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🏷️ Discussion Type
Bug
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Hi,
I’ve noticed that a number of long-published, actively maintained packages with millions of weekly downloads don’t show up in Google searches. A site:npmjs.com search for the exact package name returns nothing. Other packages, including ones from the same publishers, are indexed fine, so this doesn’t look like a problem with the packages themselves.
Not indexed:
postcss-font-variant (~2.5M weekly downloads)
https://www.google.com/search?q=site:npmjs.com%20%22postcss-font-variant%22
https://www.npmjs.com/package/postcss-font-variant
@appium/schema (~1.2M weekly downloads)
https://www.google.com/search?q=site:npmjs.com%20%22%40appium%2Fschema%22
https://www.npmjs.com/package/@appium/schema
set-interval-async (~600k weekly downloads)
https://www.google.com/search?q=site:npmjs.com%20%22set-interval-async%22
https://www.npmjs.com/package/set-interval-async
A few more I found: math-interval-parser, es-content-type, @tinyhttp/cors
Indexed, same publishers as the above:
postcss-calc
https://www.google.com/search?q=site:npmjs.com%20%22postcss-calc%22
https://www.npmjs.com/package/postcss-calc
@appium/base-plugin
https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anpmjs.com%20%22%40appium%2Fbase-plugin%22
https://www.npmjs.com/package/@appium/base-plugin
elen
https://www.google.com/search?q=site:npmjs.com%20%22elen%22
https://www.npmjs.com/package/elen
I understand that npm doesn’t control Google’s indexing. But since this seems widespread, and it’s hitting packages with very large download counts, I suspect it’s related to how npmjs.com is configured (CDN or bot-protection rules, rate limiting, headers, etc.) rather than anything on the package side. This may be related, though I can’t say whether it applies to you: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/report-that-cloudflare-ai-bot-blocking-prevents-googlebot-from-indexing-sites/584673/
I’m the publisher of set-interval-async listed above, so if it would help to test something on an affected package (a readme change, for example), I’m happy to do that.
I’m reaching out since I can't really troubleshoot from the outside - e.g. internal request logs for Googlebot or use Search Console’s URL Inspection tool would be helpful to understand the issue.
Thanks for taking a look,
Emilio
https://www.npmjs.com/~ealmansi
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