Google seems to be showing fewer and fewer PDF files, and when it does show PDF files, it seems not to show them from some pretty important sites, like IRS.gov, New York State, and some others. But in some cases we are seeing Google show PDF documents, without you having to explicitly filter for PDF file types.
I often search for forms from the IRS for [W9] and [W4] and those would often show the PDF directly from the IRS but now it shows forms from a third party site or a link to the IRS web page and not the PDF directly, even if I explicitly type in PDF into the query:
This was first posted by Savanna Gray on LinkedIn who wrote, “This week I’m seeing several sites with dramatic drops for clicks to PDFs on Google.” She shared some coloring book printables examples on her LinkedIn post. Lily Ray also shared this on LinkedIn and X quoting Savanna and said, “My amazing Amsive teammate Savanna Gray is seeing a big drop-off in clicks to PDFs in Search Console. Looks like they are dropping out of the index. Are others seeing the same?”
Many are seeing the same. Tamara Helgren sent me some Google Search Console charts showing this dip starting earlier this month:
I mean, you can force a PDF if you a filetype query, such as [site:irs.gov w9 filetype:pdf but who is going to do that? Well, I would but would the average person do this?
Now, it sometimes works, for like searching for Connecticut forms:
And even some IRS forms:
But popular NYS forms also do not show:
There plenty of other SEOs who are noticing this as well in the comments of these posts. Daniel Deceuster, VP Marketing at Zion HealthShare replied on LinkedIn saying:
Wow good catch. Just looked in GSC and our top PDF went to 0 impressions starting August 18. Second top performing PDF went to 0 impressions August 12. They combined for 10k impressions and hundreds of clicks between them the past 3 months. Looked in my index report and most recent crawl date on a PDF is August 5. They all still show there though, so they must be indexed right?
Maybe the IRS website is having connectivity issues? But does that explain the NY State website?
Oh wow, the IRS website is not accessible and it seems to have completely dropped out of Google search. Just got a message that the site can’t be reached.
This is… not good. pic.twitter.com/ELwkWuVlMQ
— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) August 25, 2026
I am not sure exactly what is up here… What are your thoughts?
