Indexing is the process by which search engines like Google discover and add your web pages to their database. When a page is indexed, it can appear in search results. If a page isn’t indexed, it simply won’t show up when people search, no matter how great the content is.
How Indexing Works
Search engines use bots called crawlers or spiders to browse the web. When a crawler visits your page, it reads the content and stores a copy in Google’s index. Later, when someone searches for a related topic, Google pulls from this index to show relevant results.
How to Check if Your Pages Are Indexed
- Search site:yourdomain.com on Google to see indexed pages
- Use Google Search Console for detailed indexing reports and to submit sitemaps
- Check individual URLs with the URL Inspection Tool in Search Console
Why Pages Might Not Get Indexed
- The page is set to noindex in your SEO plugin settings
- Your site blocks crawlers via robots.txt
- The page has no internal links pointing to it
- The content is thin or duplicated
WordPress Tip
Check your Settings > Reading page in WordPress. If “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” is ticked, nothing will get indexed. This is often left on accidentally after development and is a common beginner mistake.
Related: XML Sitemap
Related: SEO
