Firebase App Indexing
Firebase App Indexing gets your app into Google Search. If users have your app installed, they can launch your app and go directly to the content they're searching for. App Indexing reengages your app users by helping them find both public and personal content right on their device, even offering query autocompletions to help them more quickly find what they need. If users don’t yet have your app, relevant queries trigger an install card for your app in Search results.
Key capabilities
| Search results | App Indexing surfaces links to app content on Google Search. For Android, this includes an install button for your app as well as personal content results in the Google app. |
| Installs | The install button for your app appears next to your homepage search result, giving users an easy path to installing your app to view content. |
| Autocompletions | App Indexing on Android lets your users see app content directly from suggested results in the Google app. |
| Assistant | App Indexing powers public content results for screen search on Android and Google Assistant. |
| Ad targeting | If you use AdMob to monetize your app, App Indexing and AdMob will work together to improve the quality of targeted ads for public content in your app, helping to drive increased advertising revenue. |
How does it work?
To get your app's content indexed by Google, use the same URLs in your app that you use on your website and verify that you own both your app and your website. Google Search crawls the links on your website and serves them in Search results. Then, users who've installed your app on their devices go directly to the content in your app when they click on a link.
The App Indexing API on Android enhances ranking performance for links to your app and provides autocomplete suggestions based on user actions you log in your app. You can also use the App Indexing API to create an on-device index of personal content. This personal content is the user’s content, tied to their account or device. For example, in a recipe app where users can add notes, the notes users add to the recipes are their personal content. These recipe notes appear in the Google app when users search for them.
What features work for your app?
App Indexing offers enhancements to public content indexing, an on-device personal content index, and logging for user actions on both public and personal content in the app. Depending on your app’s use cases, some of these features may make more sense than others. Use the following table as an at-a-glance guide to the different App Indexing features to decide what to add to your app.
| App content type | Public content indexing (Android and iOS) | Personal content indexing (Android only) | Log user actions (Android only) |
| Public content only
Users don’t create personal content in these apps, for example, videos in YouTube. |
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| Personal content only
The content in these apps is almost exclusively tied to a specific user, for example, a messaging app like Gmail or a productivity app like Keep. |
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| Both public and personal content
These apps have both app-generated public content and user-generated personal content. |
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Case studies
To learn more about App Indexing in real-world scenarios, check out the case studies that highlight App Indexing implementations:
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App Indexing one-pager AliExpress Cookpad Daily Mail / MailOnline |
Etsy Tabelog The Guardian |
Implementation path
| Set up your links | Getting started with App Indexing is easy. Associate your app with your website, and update your app to parse and handle HTTP URLs that match links to your website. | |
| Build an index | Enable an on-device index of personal content that populates search results in the Google app on Android (if applicable). | |
| Log user actions | Log user actions so users can see app pages they’ve visited as suggested results in the Google app. Data about actions users take in your app improve search results and bring users to your relevant app content faster. | |
| Test your implementation | Use a number of tools, including the Search Preview Tool, to verify that your App Indexing implementation operates as expected. | |
| Measure impact | Analyze the impact and quality of your content using Search Console and search referrals. |