Indexing

Indexing is the process by which a search engine stores and organises a page in its index — its vast database — 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. 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.