Is an SDK required for indexing Google apps for iOS for Google DeepLinking?

Question

I want to use Google Apps Indexing with my web pages and iOS apps. I support Universal Links (or deep links on Google lingo) using Apple Search and customize my web pages accordingly.

From the Google Documentation. I can’t find out if I really need to add the Google Indexing Application SDK . The SDK does not give me any necessary functions, and I would prefer to skip it - but does Google rely on the SDK to be able to do magic?

I do not index the contents of the application, the only thing I want to index is the web pages and get the corresponding deep links .

Answer 1

To enable app indexing in an iOS app, adding the Google app indexing SDK is required, as the documentation suggests. In this way, the content of your application will be searchable by users fulfilling Google’s requests, which will lead to results that lead users to open or install your application.

As for the SDK, this will affect the rating, regardless of whether the user has your application installed. This means that if your application is indexed, Google will use the content in your application as a signal in the ranking, and not just your web content. Users will also see an advanced interface with your application icon on the search results page.

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

You are correct that Google search results for deep linking to your application are achievable using only universal links and naturally display your web content in Google search results.

The Google documentation is small, but there are two main reasons why you want to integrate the SDK for indexing Google applications:

First, as the documentation states, Google rates your “app content” higher in Google’s search results than if you hadn’t integrated the SDK. I assume that “application content” is defined here as your web content with metadata associated with the application, for example, the <link rel=alternate> specified in the documentation. I have not yet found a way to check / check the extent to which this helps - we must trust the documentation at the moment.

Secondly, your deep binding will only work with Safari Mobile. To facilitate deep linking of Google search results to your application in Chrome for iOS , you will need to implement the Google SDK, which will also add a back to Google button in your application. To find out if this is worth doing, you will need to check your analytics to find out how many of your iOS users use Chrome instead of Safari Mobile as the main browser on the iPhone.

Source for the second reason: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NFRNamQGCc&feature=youtu.be&t=268