Indexing

Indexing is the stage in the search engine process where a crawled web page is analyzed, processed, and stored in the search engine's database (index). Once a page is indexed, it becomes eligible to appear in search results for relevant queries. Without indexing, a page is invisible to search engine users regardless of its content quality or optimization.

The indexing process involves several steps. After a search engine bot crawls a page, it processes the HTML content, extracts text, identifies key elements like title tags, headings, and meta descriptions, analyzes the page's content and context, evaluates its quality and uniqueness, and determines how it should be categorized and stored. Not all crawled pages are indexed -- Google may choose not to index pages that are low quality, duplicative, or blocked by meta robots tags.

Common indexing issues include pages being accidentally blocked by robots.txt or noindex tags, thin or duplicate content that Google deems unworthy of indexing, crawl errors preventing discovery, and server issues causing timeouts during crawling. You can monitor your site's indexing status through Google Search Console's Index Coverage report and use the URL Inspection tool to check individual pages. The Google Indexing API and sitemaps can help expedite the indexing of new or updated content.