Decoding the Process: A Deep Dive into How Search Engines Crawl and Index the Web

To “Index a Page” means the page is included in the storage system (database etc.) and has associations applied (such as keywords, intent type, etc.).

What is Google indexing in SEO? For specialists, this term refers to the search engine’s database. It is vital to ensure your site is indexed. Otherwise, users will never be able to find any content it shares. Aside from understanding that indexing helps your page appear in SERPs, SEO specialists can prepare more custom web development strategies once they discover different types of indexes:

• The Google index is considered a primary source, which determines the role of various search phrases and keywords. In turn, it influences the informational weight of your domain and how likely your site will appear in SERPs when a user types in matching queries.
• There are various kinds of indexes, distinguishing unique features which will boost performance advantages.

If your pages are not indexed, they won't appear in search engine results. It is therefore essential to check if your pages are indexed. You can use a tool like IndexCheckr that will check if they are indexed by Google. If they are not, it's time to figure out why and fix the issue, usually by improving the content.


“Indexing” means Google has crawled and created an “understanding” of the page and saved that understanding for use as a possible result. If the page ranks relative to other competing pages for the query in question, the page will display in a SERP.

If your site isn’t crawling-friendly, it means it can’t be indexed and has no value on the internet. SEO efforts can technically advance your page and ensure that bots and spiders of search engines can view and analyze all of its content without difficulty.

Crawling finds the content and sends it back to be processed by Google. This is where the decision is made on whether to index the page. Indexing is breaking the page into elements, transforming the words into tokens, and storing them in data tables.

The search engine index can be compared with a list of contents, where entries are shown in detail. According to Google, this system is steadily developing and increasing its volume — the number of pages has exceeded hundreds of billions already.

A page does not have to be cached to appear in search results. A cached version is a copy retained by the search engine. Search engines make decisions to retain copies of pages for reasons not shared.

Both processes happen in Google and other systems of this kind. Still, their purposes aren’t the same:

• When Google visits your domain and adds its content to its database, it means your site is now indexed.
• When Google visited your site last time and captured a screenshot to save the details if something might go wrong, it means your page is now cached.
  

It can take a few days for a crawled page to be indexed, but sometimes QDF (query deserves Freshness) or lack of competition and good on-page SEO will see a page in results before it is indexed.

Another method of checking whether your website has a ready index status is using this formula in the search bar — site:yourdomainname.com. The number of results will represent how many pages are already indexed.

Don't underestimate internal linking —it helps search engines discover other pages.

• Update your interlinking scheme. Its consistency is a valuable long-term SEO strategy that will keep your content properly organized and indexed. If there are not very popular pages on the site, it is essential to increase their index value to prevent significant issues with the domain overall.
  

When I can, I check server logs. Unfortunately, there's a strong trend for shared hosts to disable SALs (Server Access Logs) to save resources, and CDNs stuff up Localised SALs, and often don't have CDNALs unless you pay extra for them!
Next best thing, Web Tracking.

Server logs indicate the data about search entries and provide an accurate representation of the periodic changes in requests and responses provided within the system. With HTTP response codes, URL links, IP addresses of the site visitors, and more, SEO experts can collect valuable pieces of information:

• One of the methods to utilize the potential of server logs is to analyze its data and separate good bot traffic coming from systems like Googlebot from poor sources with little SEO relevance.
• Thanks to the analysis of server logs, SEO specialists can understand how soon Google or Bing recrawls the site and its pages. If you see this period is particularly lengthy and takes months, it is a red flag to take action and locate indexable pages.

DeepRank is googles AI for SERPs. While SEOs can and should be looking at a good amount of academic research GOOG has published on DeepRank, they have also published that provides a good overview.

There are several reasons DeepRank is worth it for SEO experts:

• This metric is a highway to determine indexable pages linked to their website.
• Analyze primary URLs and their values along with duplicates.
• These calculations are also efficient in defining what SEO trends are distinguished in your site’s SEO system. Once you are aware of them, it is simpler to make any desired alterations.