Indexing

Indexing is the process by which a search engine stores and organises a page in its index — its vast database ✕ A database stores a site’s content —posts, pages, comments— in an organized way so it can be retrieved instantly. WordPress uses MySQL or MariaDB. More in the glossary → — after crawling it, so that the page can appear in results. It is a separate step from crawling: first the engine discovers and reads the page (crawling), and only then decides to store and include it in its index (indexing). A page that is not indexed, however good it is, cannot rank or receive organic traffic ✕ Traffic is the amount of data your website transfers, determined by visitor numbers and page size. Some hosting plans cap monthly traffic. More in the glossary → . The engine may choose not to index duplicate, low-quality or noindex-tagged content. You can check the status of your pages in Google Search Console and encourage indexing with useful content, internal links and a sitemap ✕ A sitemap is a file that lists the important pages of your site to help search engines discover and crawl them more easily. More in the glossary → . Getting new content indexed quickly is key to letting it start competing as soon as possible.