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Technical SEO

What is Indexing?

Updated on November 6, 2026

Indexing is the step where a search engine stores a page it has crawled in its index, the database it searches when someone types a query. A page that is not indexed cannot rank or be cited.

Crawling fetches the page; indexing decides whether to keep it and under which content. Google indexes a page when it is reachable, returns a 200 status, is not blocked by a noindex rule, is not a duplicate of another page, and carries enough original content to be worth keeping. Thin or duplicated pages are often crawled and then left out.

Search Console's page indexing report shows, for a site, which pages are indexed and why the others are not. AI assistants that retrieve sources from a search index inherit the same limit: a page outside the index is outside their answers.

Frequently asked questions

How do you check whether a page is indexed?

With the URL inspection tool in Search Console, or a search for the exact URL in Google. If neither finds it, the page is not indexed and the report says why.

Why would Google crawl a page and not index it?

Because it judged the page redundant or thin: a near-duplicate, a listing with no items, a page whose canonical points elsewhere. Fixing the content or the canonical gets it in.

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