What is indexing?
Published . Updated .
Indexing: The step where a search engine analyses a page it has crawled and stores it, so it can be returned for searches.
Google describes three stages: crawling finds and fetches pages, indexing analyses and stores them, and serving returns the best matches for a query. A page that is crawled is not always indexed.
AI assistants that search the web draw on a search index, so a page outside the index is usually invisible to them. IndexNow, an XML sitemap and internal links help a new page get indexed.
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