What is Indexing?
Indexing is the step after crawling where search engines analyze collected webpage information and add it to their index (database). Only indexed pages can appear in search results. Google decides based on quality, uniqueness, and technical factors whether to index a page. Issues like duplicate content, thin content, noindex tags, or technical errors can prevent indexing. Google Search Console shows indexing status and any issues. With URL inspection, you can submit individual URLs for indexing. A page can be crawled but not indexed if Google considers it not valuable enough.
Key Points
- Only indexed pages appear in search results
- Noindex tag specifically prevents indexing
- Duplicate content can block indexing
- URL inspection in Search Console for status check
- Index coverage report shows indexing issues
- Not every crawled page gets indexed
Practical Example
“By removing noindex tags, 200 important product pages were re-indexed and traffic increased by 40%.”