Indexing
The process by which search engines store and organize content discovered during crawling.
Indexing is the process search engines use to store and organize content they've discovered through crawling. When a search engine indexes a page, it analyzes the content, understands its context, and adds it to its massive database so it can be retrieved for relevant searches.
During indexing, search engines process various elements including text content, images, videos, title tags, meta descriptions, structured data, and the page's overall structure. They determine what the page is about, its quality, and how it relates to other pages on your site and across the web.
Not all crawled pages get indexed. Search engines may choose not to index pages due to duplicate content, low quality, noindex tags, canonicalization issues, or if the content doesn't add value. You can check which of your pages are indexed using the "site:" operator in Google or through Google Search Console.
Optimizing for indexing involves creating unique, high-quality content, using proper HTML structure, avoiding duplicate content issues, implementing structured data, and ensuring important pages aren't blocked by robots.txt or noindex tags. Good indexing is essential because unindexed pages won't appear in search results.