How the two guides work together
The inventory audit comes first because it describes the site you already have: the
URLs actually served, the equivalent addresses grouped, and one preferred URL chosen
for each group. Until that record exists, every later decision — what to redirect, what
to link, what to leave alone — is guesswork about a site nobody has fully listed.
The publication checklist then guards the door. Each new page is checked for a distinct
job, evidence behind its claims, a working visitor path, and an explicit indexing
decision before it is allowed to join the inventory. Used together, the guides keep the
inventory from growing faster than it can be defended: the audit tells you what exists,
the checklist decides what gets added.
Quick answers
What order should I read the guides in?
Start with the canonical URL inventory audit: it establishes which URLs you actually serve and which address is preferred for each equivalent group. Then use the page-level publication checklist for every new page, so the indexing decision is made before the page joins that inventory, not discovered afterwards.
Do the guides assume a particular platform or CMS?
No. Both guides work from the artifacts every publishing stack produces — a sitemap, a list of URLs, and the pages themselves. Nothing in the method depends on a specific CMS, framework or hosting provider, and each guide is paired with a browser tool that runs the mechanical half of the check.
Are the guides kept current?
Each guide shows its publication date and links its claims to primary references, mainly Google's own search documentation. The methods change slowly because they rest on how URLs, redirects and canonical signals work, not on interface details that date quickly. Corrections are recorded through the method page.