What is Indexing?

Indexing is when a search engine adds a page to its database after crawling it. Once indexed, your page can appear in search results. If a page isn't indexed, it won't rank no matter how well optimized it is.

After Googlebot crawls your page, it analyzes the content, extracts keywords, and stores this information in Google's index. This index is what Google searches through when someone runs a query.

Why indexing matters

No indexing means no rankings. Even perfectly optimized content is useless if search engines haven't added it to their index. This is one of the first things to check if a page isn't showing up in search results.

Just because a page is crawled doesn't guarantee it will be indexed. Google might choose not to index low-quality pages, duplicate content, or pages that violate their guidelines.

How to check indexing

Use the site: search operator in Google. Type site:yourdomain.com/specific-page to see if that page is indexed. If it shows up, it's indexed. If not, something is blocking it.

Google Search Console shows all your indexed pages and reports any indexing issues. Check the Coverage report to see which pages are indexed, which are excluded, and why.

Common indexing problems

Noindex tags in your page's meta data tell search engines not to index the page. Sometimes these are added by mistake, especially on staging sites that later go live. Check your robots.txt file isn't blocking important pages.

Duplicate content or thin content might not get indexed if Google considers it low-quality. Pages that are too similar to existing content might be excluded.

New sites and pages take time to index. Google might discover your page within days, but it could take weeks for new content on a brand new site to get fully indexed and start ranking.