SEO
Indexing
Indexing is the process by which a search engine adds a page to its searchable database after crawling it. A page must be indexed before it can rank for any query — and indexing is no longer guaranteed for low-quality content.
Part of Sitemap monitoring — the full answer, the facts and the alternatives in one place.
In depth
Modern Google indexing is selective: the bot crawls billions of pages it never indexes. The decision depends on perceived content quality, link signals, schema, page speed, and uniqueness. Pages can be 'crawled, currently not indexed' for months or permanently.
Check indexing via Google Search Console's URL Inspection tool, the `site:` operator (rough but cheap), and the `Coverage` report. Bing publishes similar data via Bing Webmaster Tools.
Why it matters
If a page is not indexed, no SEO work on that page matters. Indexation rate (indexed pages / submitted pages) is a leading indicator of overall content quality and a critical health metric for content-heavy sites.
How Lemwatch helps with indexing
Lemwatch monitors indexing continuously and alerts you the moment something changes.
Indexation tracking →Related terms
SEO
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Sitemap
A sitemap is an XML file that lists every URL on a website intended for search engines to index, along with me…
IndexNow
IndexNow is an open protocol jointly developed by Microsoft and Yandex that lets websites instantly notify sea…
Canonical Tag
A canonical tag is an HTML link element (`<link rel="canonical" href="...">`) that tells search engines which …
robots.txt
robots.txt is a plain-text file at the root of a website that tells well-behaved web crawlers which URLs they …
Browse the full Lemwatch monitoring glossary (47 terms).