What Is Indexing in SEO?

Crawling vs. indexing vs. ranking

1. Crawling: a bot such as Googlebot discovers a URL (through links or a sitemap) and fetches it.
2. Indexing: the search engine processes the page's content, decides which URL is canonical, and stores it if it is worth keeping.
3. Ranking: when someone searches, the engine picks and orders indexed pages for that query.

A problem at any step stops the next one. Robots.txt can block crawling; a noindex tag or low perceived value can block indexing.

Why pages are not indexed

Search Console's Page indexing report gives the reasons. The most common for new sites:

• "Discovered - currently not indexed": Google knows the URL but has not crawled it yet, often on new or large sites.
• "Crawled - currently not indexed": Google fetched the page and chose not to index it for now, often because it looks thin or duplicate.
• Excluded by a noindex tag, sometimes left over from a staging site.
• Duplicate or alternate pages, where Google chose a different URL as canonical.
• Soft 404s and errors, where the page looks empty or broken.

How to get pages indexed faster

• Submit an XML sitemap in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
• Link new pages from pages that are already indexed, such as your home page or a hub.
• Use URL Inspection in Search Console to request indexing for important pages.
• Earn a few links from sites that are crawled often, such as launch directories.
• Use IndexNow to notify Bing and other participating engines; Google does not use IndexNow.
• Make each page clearly useful and distinct, so it is worth indexing.

Our checklist on how to get indexed by Google fast has the full process, and why your site is not showing on Google covers fixes.

Illustrative examples

Hypothetical scenarios that show how the term applies. They are not reports of real cases.

• A new SaaS submits its sitemap, links its pricing page from the home page and requests indexing; Google indexes the key pages within days.
• A blog post shows "Crawled - currently not indexed" because it is nearly identical to another post on the same site; merging the two fixes it.