PDF generated with unreadable characters for Googlebot crawling (and for copy-pasting)

[Mark ORIMBELLI LLC]

Source: InDesign 2022 documents

Output: PDF (any format) with Embedded Fonts (western alphabets)

Problem: On screen and print the PDF appears OK, when crawled by Googlebot the text is a bounch of "garbage" unreadable charaters.

Note to readers: Please do not suggest the "Copy-With-Formatting" option as solution. I'm talking of Google crawling and search indexing in this post.

Link to PDF as example.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Quite honestly, if it exports correctly and views correctly in Acrobat, I'd think it's one of two things.

First, the embedded fonts are encrypted in standard Adobe practice, and that's somehow confusing Google, even though it should be reading the raw text and ignoring things like font and layout.

Second... it's Google's problem. 🙂

—

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

I exported to Word and it came out with a lot of "garbage" characters. I suspect it is the font--as a test, try another font, such as an Adobe font.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Ah, didn't think to try that (but then, I am wary of downloading and messing with files, even here in a fairly safe zone). Still not sure how a font, which AFAIK is only called on at rendering/display time, could mangle the text that is in theory more clear at a bot-search level.

Strange. I've never heard of an unreadable PDF, in English, and that works in every other way.

—

[Mark ORIMBELLI LLC]

UPDATE: the issue seems solved flagging "Create Tagged PDF"

[Laubender]

Hi Mark,

just to make it clear, your solution was to enable the option:

[x] Create Tagged PDF

Thanks,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

[Mark ORIMBELLI LLC]

Exactly.

You need to enable the option: [x] Create Tagged PDF

to obtain a PDF that is correctly readable, and therefore indexable, from Googlebot & friends.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

That feature is enabled by default. The PDF sample you uploaded was tagged. 

[Mark ORIMBELLI LLC]

Since yesterday, on website have been updated with Tagged PDFs. I could not edit the post with link.

On my Indesign 17.1.0.50 Create Tagged PDF it's unchecked by default on all presets, except for:

High Quality Print.

That's kinda weird since that preset is used to send PDFs to printers and not for posting on websites…