Glossary
What is Indexing?
Indexing is when a search engine stores a page in its database so it can appear in results. A page that isn't indexed can't rank.
Search engines work in three steps: they crawl pages (fetch them), index them (analyse and store them), and rank them for searches. A page that isn't indexed can't appear in results at all.
Why a page isn't indexed
- It hasn't been found yet: no links to it and it isn't in your sitemap.
- It is blocked by robots.txt or a
noindextag. - It has been judged duplicate or low-value. See thin content.
- The server returned an error when it was crawled.
Checking and speeding it up
The Pages report in Google Search Console shows which pages are indexed and why others aren't. You can ask Google to inspect a URL, submit your sitemap, and use IndexNow to notify the search engines that support it.
Don't expect instant
Even a good page can take days or weeks to appear, especially on a new site. Seovyn tells supporting search engines about each page as it goes live and checks the page is actually reachable. See Search engine indexing.
Related
- Google Search ConsoleGoogle Search Console is Google's free tool that shows how your site performs in search: which queries bring clicks, which pages are indexed, and what's wrong.
- IndexNowIndexNow is an open protocol that lets a site tell search engines instantly when a URL is new or changed, so it can be crawled sooner.
- SitemapA sitemap is a file that lists the pages of a site you want search engines to find, often with the date each last changed.