Google Scholar is not indexing Dspace

[Ezequiel Esposito]

Hello! After a few days of beeing down our repository, google scholar stop indexing it and the records that already have been indexed seem to be missing. 

What could be happening?

[Wael Elmedany]

Dear Ezequiel and all,

I’m experiencing the same issue after upgrading our repository to DSpace 8. It's been over three months since the migration, and Google Scholar has not resumed indexing our content. Additionally, several records that were previously indexed now appear to be missing from search results.

I’ve reviewed the sitemap and robots.txt configurations, which appear correct, and the repository is accessible publicly. It would be helpful if anyone who has resolved this issue or has insights into potential causes post-DSpace 8 upgrade could share their experience.

Best regards,

Wael 

On Sat, 31 May 2025, 02:48 Ezequiel Esposito, <esposito...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello! After a few days of beeing down our repository, google scholar stop indexing it and the records that already have been indexed seem to be missing. 

What could be happening?

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[DSpace Technical Support]

Hi all,

You should check our Search Engine Optimization guidelines for DSpace 8, which were written based on feedback from the Google Scholar team.

https://wiki.lyrasis.org/display/DSDOC8x/Search+Engine+Optimization

Especially make sure that your robots.txt looks correct, and that your Sitemaps are enabled & working.  You also should verify you are running in production mode, which ensures that server side rendering is enabled (as this is required for search engine bots).

Assuming you've followed those guidelines, there should be no issues with indexing your DSpace 8 site in Google Scholar.  In that scenario, you also could contact Google Scholar via their troubleshooting guidelines at https://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/inclusion.html#troubleshooting

Tim

[Vicente Zapatero Martin]

Hi all,

We experimented the same issue but in version 7.6.2, I know I must upgrade to last version to improve in everything. I have followed the search optimizations: robots, host headers behind proxy,... We have read the brief guide from Google Scholar too. We sent email to Google Scholar support too.

This is not a complaint to the dspace team that makes a great job. We need more info about google scholar behavior. In a couple of weeks we are missing from search results first. Few days ago, we surprisingly we have reappeared and now we are completly dissapeared. What kind of joke is this? Any more tips? 

I don't want to just sit and wait or even pray to "Google Scholar God".

Thanks a lot.

[Alfeu Uzai Tavares]

Hello,

In 8.1 and 7.6.2 a new feature was added that enables SSR only for certain pages.

The default values should be fine, I just tested it with 8.1 images (backend and frontend) and it is working on the necessary pages for Google indexing.

You can test whether your instance has SSR enabled for the item pages by either disabling Javascript temporarily in your browser or executing a curl <url to item page> in a terminal. 

If in either case you are unable to view the item page, the issue may be with your SSR configuration or how you are starting/deploying the front-end.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/dspace-tech/98c91ecb-8e2b-4c2c-8a06-98b650676c69n%40googlegroups.com.

[Ezequiel Esposito]

We have Dspace 5.10 Now is working properly, I think it going to take time to be reindexed. or we have tod o something?

[DSpace Technical Support]

Hi all,

Obviously, Google Scholar controls the time frame in which they index sites. DSpace doesn't have any way to prompt Google Scholar to run a new index or update their index of your site.  The only way I'm aware of to do that would be to contact Google Scholar and ask them nicely to reindex your site. Unfortunately, no one but Google Scholar can control when they index your site. 

DSpace obviously strives to make itself easy for Google Scholar to index, and our SEO guidelines to optimize indexing are at https://wiki.lyrasis.org/display/DSDOC8x/Search+Engine+Optimization   But, if you are already following those guidelines and are still having issues, then the only other option is to reach out to Google Scholar directly (see their troubleshooting page: https://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/inclusion.html#troubleshooting).  Beyond the DSpace SEO guidelines, DSpace has no other way to control whether your site is indexed with Google Scholar.  If you get in touch with Google Scholar, and they discover indexing problems in *DSpace itself*, then the Google Scholar team will reach out to the DSpace team to let us know. In that scenario, we'd work to fix the issues and improve things in future releases.

I hope that helps,

Tim

[Esposito Ezequiel]

Tim, Now our repository is now being reindexed, but only the citation. Not the link to full text o record, for example: this record https://repositorio.uca.edu.ar/handle/123456789/19920 was uploaded yesterday, and today we only see this: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_q=&as_epq=Un%20aporte%20para%20la%20ense%C3%B1anza%20del%20derecho%20privado&as_occt=any should we be expecting to be reindexed the full text or a link to our dspace?

Best regards

Ezequiel Esposito

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[DSpace Technical Support]

Hi Ezequiel,

At a minimum, Google Scholar will simply link back to your content in your repository.  However, if they are able to find an *indexable* file attached, then they also will provide a direct download link to that file and sometimes index the file content itself.   You can see that by simply searching Google Scholar yourself. 

For instance, here's a search for "mathematics" in Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C14&q=mathematics&btnG=&oq=mathe   You'll see that some of the results include links to PDFs, while others do not.  My understanding is that it depends on whether Google Scholar bots can find an associated file and understand that file enough to index it.

I don't have any information about which file formats Google Scholar is able to process in this way, or if it's able to process all PDFs or just some PDFs.  That is all something you'd have to ask the Google Scholar team.  I also don't know whether Google Scholar will initially only index the metadata and come back and index files later, or if they index everything at once.  You'd have to ask them.

By the way, I also notice your system is DSpace-CRIS.  That's a different system from DSpace, which is supported by 4Science and other DSpace-CRIS users.  It's based on DSpace, but it's not the same thing as DSpace.  I'm the DSpace Tech Lead, and I'm not involved with DSpace-CRIS.  So, I'm unfortunately not able to answer detailed questions about DSpace-CRIS. But from my understanding it has similar features to DSpace with regards to trying to support Google Scholar well.  If you need to know more, you likely should reach out to 4Science.

Tim