Google and PDF indexing

[jpfleiderer]

It was recently brought to my attention that one of the PDFs on our site wasn't showing up when looking for a particular phrase within the document. The user was trying to search only within our site. Once I removed the site restriction - I noticed that there was another site using the exact same PDF. It appears Google is indexing that PDF but not ours. The name, title, and content are the same. Is there any way to get around this?

I find it interesting as we use GSA and within GSA it shows up for the phrase. I have to imagine Google is saying that it already has the PDF and therefore is ignoring our PDF. Any tricks to get around this?

BTW - both sites rightfully should have the PDF. One is a client site and they are allowed to host the PDFs created for them. However, I'd like Mathematica to also be listed.

Query: no site restriction (notice: Teach for america comes up #1 and Mathematica is not listed). https://www.google.com/search?as_q=&as_epq=HSAC_final_rpt_9_2013.pdf&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&lr=&cr=&as_qdr=all&as_sitesearch=&as_occt=any&safe=images&tbs=&as_filetype=pdf&as_rights=&gws_rd=ssl#q=HSAC_final_rpt_9_2013.pdf+"Teach+charlotte"+filetype:pdf&as_qdr=all&filter=0

Query: site restriction (notice that it doesn't find the phrase and redirects to any of the words) https://www.google.com/search?as_q=&as_epq=HSAC_final_rpt_9_2013.pdf&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&lr=&cr=&as_qdr=all&as_sitesearch=&as_occt=any&safe=images&tbs=&as_filetype=pdf&as_rights=&gws_rd=ssl#as_qdr=all&q="Teach+charlotte"+site:www.mathematica-mpr.com+filetype:pdf

[customerparadigm.com]

It sounds like it could be a few different issues, but my initial look at the site makes it seem to me that it's duplicate content, and that Google is only returning the results for their PDF and not for yours.

Google does hate duplicate content, and this is probably why they are only showing their PDF.

It may be that they posted theirs first, or they linked to it first.

As you probably know, not all PDFs are created equally. Some are more difficult for a search engine to read (i.e. might have text tied up in graphics). And PDFs are really not a great end user experience.

If you really want to rank for this, I might suggest creating this page as an HTML page instead of a PDF, as it might be able to be indexed more easily, and you might rank for it better.

I hope this helps?

Thanks,
-- Jeff

[Christy-Correll]

Hi Rose, Jeff provided a great response. Did it answer your question? If so, please mark it "good answer", thanks!

Christy