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Indexing

Indexing is the stage at which Google analyses a crawled page and stores it in its index, the database that search results come from.

How it works

Google Search works in three stages: crawling, indexing and serving results. Not every page passes all three. Google learns of an address from a link, a sitemap or a Merchant Center feed, then fetches and renders the page like a browser.

At indexing, Google analyses the text, title, alt attributes and images. It groups pages with similar content and picks one canonical, the page that may be shown in results. Google doesn’t guarantee indexing, even for pages that follow its rules: low-quality content, a noindex rule or a site design that makes indexing difficult can keep a page out.

Two Google Search Console statuses are easy to confuse. “Crawled - currently not indexed”: Google fetched the page but didn’t index it; it may still do so later, and there’s no need to resubmit. “Discovered - currently not indexed”: Google knows the address but hasn’t fetched it yet, usually because Google expected the crawl to overload the site.

Why product pages aren’t indexed covers the causes and which pages are worth the effort.

Where you see it

  • Search Console, Page indexing report: indexed and not indexed pages, with the reason each page was left out.
  • Search Console, URL Inspection: the index status of one address and the canonical Google chose.

Example

Example store, not client data.

The tableware shop has 3,000 product pages. The Page indexing report shows 2,100 indexed, 600 “Crawled” and 300 “Discovered”: 2,100 ÷ 3,000 = 70% indexed. In ads this month, 1,200 of the same products got impressions: 40%.

Not to be confused with

  • Crawl budget — how much of a site Googlebot is ready to fetch. It affects “Discovered” pages; a “Crawled” page has already been fetched.
  • Assortment coverage — the share of the catalogue that got impressions in ads. A page can be indexed while its product gets no impressions in ads, and the reverse.

Right and wrong readings

  • Wrong: “Every page of the store should be indexed.” Right: Google indexes canonical pages; duplicates and filtered variations of a page are expected to stay out, and Google says not to expect 100% coverage.

Sources