topic Re: Is content throughout an entire ArcGIS StoryMap indexed by search engines? in ArcGIS StoryMaps Questions

Is content throughout an entire ArcGIS StoryMap indexed by search engines?

ShaneBradt — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 17:38:00 GMT

Can anyone provide information regarding what part of an ArcGIS StoryMap is indexed by search engines? For example, is it the title, the info on the "card", and the first bit of content at the top of the page? Or is the ArcGIS Storymap indexed by the search engine? (even the REALLY LONG ones..?)

I'm trying to get my head around how to make content in and ArcGIS StoryMap as discoverable as possible, particularly in comparison to how similar content would be indexed if housed on a number of different webpages on a website (for example - https://extension.unh.edu/nhnriguide).

Thanks so much in advance for any info people can share.

Shane

PS: I imagine this might come across your desk at some point @OwenGeo, so I went ahead tagged you and help the process along!

Re: Is content throughout an entire ArcGIS StoryMap indexed by search engines?

OwenGeo — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 21:14:26 GMT

@ShaneBradt -- The "card" info you set when publishing (title and summary) are important, but search engines do also analyze the content on the page as well. You can review search engine resources like these to understand how to improve discoverability of your StoryMaps.

I can also say that content created using ArcGIS StoryMaps consistently gets excellent SEO ratings. This is due to the amount of high quality content created on the platform and lots of under-the-hood technical work (optimizations for performance, accessibility, SEO, mobile rendering, etc.).

Re: Is content throughout an entire ArcGIS StoryMap indexed by search engines?

ShaneBradt — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 01:55:19 GMT

Thanks so much (as always) @OwenGeo! The info you provided above was what I suspected, but it was great to hear this from you directly.

I sent this info along to the person in our organization who was worried about losing web traffic if we created a new ArcGIS StoryMap using the NRI content current housed at the link above. I suppose you can already guess which side of that argument I came down on regarding the usefulness of the info as housed on the current webpages vs. housing that same content in an ArcGIS StoryMap (expanded and improved, with lots of maps of course). Thanks again!

Shane