The process.
THE THREE STAGES
- Crawling: finding pages
- Indexing: storing and understanding them
- Ranking: deciding which to show for a search
WHAT CRAWLING IS
Automated software following links and requesting pages.
HOW PAGES ARE FOUND
Links from other pages, on your site and elsewhere Your sitemap Previously known addresses
WHAT INDEXING MEANS
The page is stored and can appear in results.
A crawled page is not necessarily indexed.
WHY A PAGE MIGHT NOT BE INDEXED
It was blocked It is marked not to be indexed It duplicates another page It is judged to have no value It was never found
WHAT THIS MEANS PRACTICALLY
Before worrying about ranking, confirm your pages are indexed.
A page that is not indexed cannot rank for anything.
WHERE TO CHECK
Search Console reports which pages are indexed and why others are not.
