What is Indexing?
Definition
Indexing is the process by which search engines analyze, organize, and store crawled web pages in their database, making them eligible to appear in search results.
Why indexing matters
Indexing matters because only indexed pages can appear in search results. Crawling discovers your content, but indexing determines whether it's stored and potentially shown to searchers.
Not all crawled pages get indexed. Search engines evaluate content quality, uniqueness, and value before adding pages to their index. Understanding this helps focus efforts on creating content worthy of indexing.
Controlling what gets indexed is as important as getting pages indexed. Keeping low-value pages out of the index improves crawl efficiency and prevents them from diluting your site's overall quality signals.
Key concepts and types
- •Index eligibility
Factors that determine whether a crawled page is added to the search engine's database. - •Indexation control
Using noindex tags and robots.txt to prevent specific pages from being indexed. - •Index freshness
How recently search engines have updated their stored version of your pages. - •Index coverage
Reports showing which pages are indexed, excluded, or experiencing errors. - •Selective indexing
When search engines choose not to index pages despite being able to crawl them.
Common misconceptions
- ✕All crawled pages are automatically indexed
- ✕You can force Google to index any page
- ✕Noindex tags prevent crawling
- ✕Indexed pages will definitely rank
- ✕Index status updates immediately after changes
Related terms
FAQs
How can you check if a page is indexed?
Use 'site:yourdomain.com/page-url' in Google search, or check the Index Coverage report and URL Inspection tool in Google Search Console.
Why might Google not index a page?
Common reasons include low content quality, duplicate content, noindex tags, crawl blocks, poor internal linking, or the page being too new to process yet.
How long does indexing take?
It varies from minutes to weeks depending on site authority, crawl frequency, and content type. New pages on established sites typically index within days.