Web Indexing: What It Is, How It Works, and How to Get Google to Index Your Site in 2026

If your page is not indexed, it does not exist for Google. It does not matter how much you have invested in design, content, or advertising: without indexing, your URL does not appear in any search result, does not compete for any keyword, and generates zero organic clicks.

Web indexing is the process by which search engines discover, analyze, and store your site's pages in their database. It is the essential step that comes before ranking. And in 2026, with Google processing billions of pages daily while managing generative AI crawlers, increasingly tight crawl budgets, and growing technical demands, understanding how indexing works is not optional — it is the foundation of any SEO strategy that aims to deliver results.

In this guide, we explain the complete indexing process, from crawling to inclusion in Google's index, with concrete steps to verify the status of your site, solve the most common issues, and ensure every relevant page is properly indexed.

What Is Web Indexing

Web indexing is the process by which a search engine analyzes the content of a URL and stores it in its index: a massive database that Google queries every time someone performs a search.

Think of Google's index as a library catalog. If a book is not cataloged, the librarian cannot find it even though it is physically on the shelf. In the same way, if your page is not in Google's index, it cannot appear in search results no matter how precisely it matches what the user is looking for.

It is important to distinguish three concepts that are often confused:

• Crawling: Googlebot visits your URL and downloads its HTML content.
• Rendering: Google executes the page's JavaScript to obtain the final content as a real user would see it.
• Indexing: Google analyzes the rendered content, processes it, and decides whether to store it in its index.

A page can be crawled but not indexed. And a page that is never crawled will never be indexed. Each phase has its own rules and failure points.

How the Indexing Process Works Step by Step

Google does not index pages at random. It follows a systematic process with three distinct phases. Understanding each one is fundamental to diagnosing and resolving indexing issues.

Phase 1: Crawling

Everything starts with Googlebot, Google's crawler. Googlebot discovers URLs in three main ways:

1. XML sitemaps: the sitemap.xml file explicitly tells it which URLs exist on your site.
2. Internal and external links: every link Googlebot finds while crawling a page is added to its crawl queue.
3. Direct requests: when you manually submit a URL through Google Search Console.

Once Googlebot has a URL in its queue, it sends an HTTP GET request to the server. If the server returns a 200 (success) status code, Googlebot downloads the HTML and passes it to the next phase. If it receives a 404 (not found), 500 (server error), or a redirect, it acts accordingly.

The key concept here is the crawl budget: the amount of resources Google allocates to crawling your site in a given period. The crawl budget depends on two factors:

• Crawl capacity: how many requests it can make without overloading your server. If your site responds slowly, Google reduces crawl frequency to avoid bringing it down.
• Crawl demand: how much interest Google has in your pages. A site with frequently updated content and good user metrics receives more crawling than a static one.

In 2026, Core Web Vitals directly influence crawl capacity. A site with a Time to First Byte (TTFB) below 200 ms allows Googlebot to crawl more pages in the same time than one that responds in 2 seconds. Every millisecond matters when Google has to decide how to distribute its crawl budget across billions of sites.

Phase 2: Rendering

This is where many sites lose the game without knowing it. After downloading the initial HTML, Google sends it to its Web Rendering Service (WRS), which executes JavaScript just like a Chrome browser.

This is critical because a large portion of modern web content is generated with JavaScript. If your framework (React, Vue, Angular) renders content exclusively on the client (client-side rendering), Google needs to execute your JavaScript to see that content. And the rendering queue is not instantaneous: it can take hours or even days to process your page.

The JavaScript and indexing problem:

If rendering fails (JavaScript errors, timeouts, external dependencies that don't load), Google indexes the empty HTML. In practice, this means your page appears in the index but without relevant content, or simply doesn't get indexed because it's considered empty.

The technical solution we always recommend is server-side rendering (SSR) or static site generation (SSG). Frameworks like Astro, Next.js, or Nuxt allow the HTML to reach the crawler with content already included, without relying on JavaScript to display essential information. At Kiwop, our own site serves content in 7 languages with SSR on Astro, ensuring that Googlebot receives complete content on every request.

Phase 3: Indexing Itself

Once Google has the rendered content, it processes it to decide whether to include it in the index and how. This phase includes:

• Content analysis: Google extracts the text, identifies headings, analyzes the semantic structure, and determines what the page is about.
• Quality evaluation: Is the content original? Does it add value? Is it substantially different from other pages already indexed?
• Canonicalization: if Google detects duplicate or very similar content across multiple URLs, it chooses one as canonical (the preferred version) and may discard the rest.
• Technical signals: meta tags (robots, canonical, hreflang), structured data, and site architecture influence how Google categorizes and stores the page.

Google does not index everything it crawls. If a page has thin content (scarce or valueless), is a duplicate of another already in the index, or has directives preventing indexation, Google discards it. According to Google's internal data, only a fraction of crawled URLs end up in the final index.

How to Check if Your Site Is Indexed

Before fixing problems, you need a clear diagnosis. These are the three ways to check the indexation status of your site.

The site: Operator in Google

The quickest way (though not the most precise) is to search directly on Google:

The number of results gives you a rough estimate of how many pages Google has indexed from your site. If you search for a specific URL:

If no results appear, that page is not indexed. It's a quick but limited diagnosis: Google doesn't always show all indexed pages with this operator.

Google Search Console (the Definitive Method)

Google Search Console is the official tool and the most reliable for verifying indexation. It offers two key functions:

Page indexing report (Indexing > Pages): shows the global status of your site. You will see how many pages are indexed, how many are not, and the exact reason for exclusion for each group. The most common reasons are:

• Crawled — currently not indexed: Google visited it but decided not to index it.
• Discovered — currently not indexed: Google knows it exists but hasn't crawled it yet.
• Excluded by noindex tag: the page itself tells Google not to index it.
• Duplicate, Google chose a different canonical: the content is too similar to another URL.
• Alternate page with proper canonical tag: it's a variant (language, mobile version) correctly configured.

URL Inspection tool (URL Inspection): enter any URL and Google Search Console shows you its exact status: whether it's indexed, when it was last crawled, if it has rendering errors, which canonical Google detected, and how it classifies it in terms of mobile crawling.

Sitemaps and Server Logs

Comparing the URLs in your sitemap with the indexed pages reveals discrepancies. If you have 500 URLs in your sitemap but only 300 indexed, there are 200 pages that Google has decided to ignore. Cross-referencing this information with server logs (to see if Googlebot actually visits them) completes the diagnosis. The web analytics service is essential for setting up this traceability correctly.

How to Get Google to Index Your Site

Once you understand the process and have diagnosed the current status, these are the concrete steps to ensure indexation.

Set Up a Correct XML Sitemap

The XML sitemap is your direct communication channel with Google. It explicitly tells Google which URLs you want it to crawl and index.

A well-configured sitemap for a multilingual site:

Key sitemap rules:

• Include only canonical URLs that return a 200 status code. Don't include redirects, 404s, or pages with noindex.
• Update the <lastmod> date only when the content actually changes. Google penalizes artificially inflated lastmod dates.
• For large sites (more than 50,000 URLs), use a sitemap index that groups files by section or language.
• Submit the sitemap to Google Search Console and verify it processes without errors.

Optimize Your robots.txt File

The robots.txt file controls what bots can crawl and what they cannot. A mistake here can block indexation of entire sections without you realizing.

Common robots.txt mistakes:

• Blocking CSS or JavaScript files with Disallow. Google needs access to these resources to render the page. If you block them, it cannot see your content.
• Not declaring the sitemap. It's a missed opportunity to tell Google where your URLs are.
• Confusing Disallow with noindex. Robots.txt prevents crawling, but if a blocked page has external links, Google can still index the URL (without content). To prevent indexation, use the noindex meta tag.

Manage AI Crawlers

In 2026, your robots.txt is no longer just for Google. GPTBot (OpenAI), ClaudeBot (Anthropic), and PerplexityBot are active crawlers that scan your site to feed AI answer engines. The decision to allow or block them has direct implications:

• If you allow them: your content may appear cited in ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity responses, generating visibility and referral traffic.
• If you block them: you become invisible to generative search engines, which each month represent a growing percentage of content discovery.

Our recommendation is to allow AI crawling on public sections (blog, services, case studies) and block it in private areas or those without public value (admin, checkout, user accounts).

Use the Robots Meta Tag Correctly

The robots meta tag inside the <head> of each page controls indexation at the individual level:

Use noindex on pages that should not appear in searches: thank-you pages, internal search results, deep pagination pages, legal content without SEO value, or staging pages that should not be public.

A common case we see in audits: sites migrating from a development environment to production that forget to remove the global noindex meta tag they had during development. The result is an entire site invisible to Google for weeks until someone catches it.

Build a Solid Internal Linking Architecture

Google discovers pages by following links. If a URL has no internal links pointing to it (an orphan page), Googlebot has very few ways to find it even if it's in the sitemap.

Internal linking best practices for indexation:

• Every important page should be within a maximum of 3 clicks from the homepage.
• Use descriptive anchor text, not generic phrases like "click here."
• Navigation menus, breadcrumbs, and related articles blocks are natural internal linking tools.
• For multilingual sites, each language version should have its own internal linking network. Hreflangs indicate the equivalence between languages, but they do not replace internal linking within each language.

Request Indexation Manually When Needed

For new or updated pages that you need indexed quickly, Google Search Console offers the option to request indexation of a specific URL:

1. Open Google Search Console.
2. Enter the URL in the inspection bar.
3. If it's not indexed, click "Request Indexing."

Google does not guarantee timeframes, but in practice, manually submitted URLs tend to get indexed in hours or a few days, compared to the days or weeks natural crawling can take. It is especially useful for content that needs to appear quickly, such as trend articles or product launches.

Common Indexing Problems and How to Fix Them

These are the problems we encounter most frequently in the technical SEO audits we perform.

Duplicate Content and Cannibalization

When Google finds multiple pages with very similar content, it chooses one as canonical and may ignore the rest. This is an especially serious problem in:

• E-commerce: products with identical descriptions, color/size variants with separate URLs.
• Multilingual sites: untranslated content served in multiple languages with the same base.
• Blogs: articles covering very similar topics without clear differentiation.

Solution: use the <link rel="canonical"> tag to tell Google the preferred version. On multilingual sites, combine canonical with hreflang so Google understands each version is the canonical for its language:

JavaScript Blocking Content

If your site depends on JavaScript to display main content and rendering fails, Google indexes an empty or partial page.

How to diagnose it: use the URL Inspection tool in Google Search Console and compare the "Rendered HTML" tab with what you expect to see. If content is missing, the problem is in rendering.

Solutions by priority:

1. SSR or SSG (definitive solution): serve the HTML with content already included. Frameworks like Astro, Next.js, or Nuxt do this natively.
2. Dynamic rendering: serve a pre-rendered version to bots and the JavaScript version to users. It's a temporary solution that Google accepts but does not recommend long-term.
3. Audit dependencies: if your JavaScript loads content from external APIs, a timeout or error in that API can make content unavailable when Googlebot renders.

Speed Problems and Crawl Budget

A slow server drastically reduces the number of pages Google can crawl. If Googlebot takes 3 seconds to receive each response, in the same time it could crawl 100 pages from a fast site, it only crawls 30 from yours.

Crawl budget problem indicators (visible in Google Search Console > Settings > Crawl):

• Average response time above 500 ms.
• Abrupt drops in crawl requests.
• Increase in server errors (5xx).

Solutions:

• Implement server-level caching (nginx, CDN like Cloudflare).
• Optimize database queries that feed the most crawled pages.
• Ensure Core Web Vitals pass the thresholds: LCP under 2.5 seconds, INP under 200 ms, CLS under 0.1.
• Eliminate or consolidate low-value URLs that consume crawl budget without generating traffic (deep pagination pages, indexable facet filters, duplicate URL parameters).

Discovered but Not Indexed Pages

This is one of the most frustrating statuses in Google Search Console. Google knows your URL exists, but has not crawled it. Common causes:

• Low domain authority: if your site is new or has few external links, Google assigns little crawl budget.
• Too many low-quality URLs: if the ratio of useful pages to junk pages is low, Google reduces overall crawling.
• Server overload: Google detected that your server responded slowly and reduced crawl frequency.

Solution: improve the overall quality of the site (remove thin or duplicate content), strengthen internal linking to pending pages, and manually request indexation of the most important ones.

Hreflang Errors on Multilingual Sites

On sites with multiple language versions, hreflang errors are a constant source of indexing problems. Google may end up indexing the wrong version of a page for a given language, or not index any alternate version at all.

The most common errors we find when managing sites with 7 language versions:

• Non-reciprocal hreflangs: the Spanish page points to the English version, but the English version does not point back to the Spanish one. Google requires references to be bidirectional.
• Inconsistent trailing slash in URLs: if your canonical is without a trailing slash but the hreflang points to a URL with a trailing slash, Google treats them as different URLs.
• Languages without their own content: serving the same Spanish content under the /de/ (German) URL is worse than not having a German version. Google detects duplicate content across languages and may de-index both versions.

Indexing and the New Generative AI Engines

The 2026 landscape includes a factor that did not exist two years ago: generative AI crawlers. GPTBot, ClaudeBot, and PerplexityBot actively crawl the web to feed their models and generate answers.

These bots respect robots.txt, but behave differently from Googlebot:

• Crawl frequency: they can be more aggressive than Googlebot if you don't limit the rate through crawl-delay or your infrastructure.
• Content they prioritize: they look for factual content, verifiable data, structured lists, and direct answers to questions. Generic content without concrete data has less chance of being cited.
• They don't index like Google: they don't maintain a public index you can query. Your content may be in their systems but you have no direct way to verify it.

The strategy we apply at Kiwop is clear: keep main content accessible to all crawlers (Google and AI bots), with clean semantic structures (hierarchical headings, schema markup, JSON-LD structured data) that facilitate both traditional indexation and citation in answer engines.

Google's AI Overviews, which in 2026 appear in nearly half of monitored searches, also depend on indexation. If your page is not indexed by Google, it cannot appear in an AI Overview. Indexation remains the gateway to all organic visibility, including that generated by AI.

Indexing Checklist for 2026

Before wrapping up an indexing audit, we verify these points:

• robots.txt: does not block CSS, JS, or important pages. Declares the sitemap. Manages AI crawlers explicitly.
• XML sitemap: contains only canonical URLs with 200 status codes. Submitted and processed in Google Search Console without errors.
• Meta robots: pages that should be indexed have index, follow (or no meta robots, which is equivalent). Those that should not be indexed have noindex.
• Canonical tags: each page has a correct canonical pointing to itself or the preferred version.
• Hreflang: correctly configured on multilingual sites, with reciprocity between all versions.
• Rendering: main content is visible in the served HTML (SSR/SSG), without relying exclusively on JavaScript.
• Server speed: TTFB below 500 ms, ideally below 200 ms.
• Core Web Vitals: LCP, INP, and CLS within "good" thresholds.
• Internal linking: no important page is orphaned. All are within 3 clicks or fewer from the homepage.
• Quality content: no thin, duplicate, or valueless pages consuming crawl budget.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Long Does It Take Google to Index a New Page?

It depends on multiple factors: domain authority, assigned crawl frequency, content quality, and whether you've submitted the URL manually. On sites with good authority, a new page can be indexed in hours if you submit it through Google Search Console. On new or low-authority sites, it can take days to weeks. The average for an established site is usually 1 to 4 days.

Are Indexing and Ranking the Same Thing?

No. Indexing is the prerequisite: it means Google has stored your page in its database. Ranking is the result of how Google evaluates that page against the competition for each query. A page can be indexed and appear at position 80, where nobody sees it. The goal of SEO is to improve that ranking once the page is indexed.

Should I Index Every Page on My Site?

No. Indexing pages without SEO value (internal search results, login pages, thank-you pages, facet filters, deep pagination) dilutes the perceived quality of your site. Google evaluates quality at the site level, not just the individual page level. A site with 10,000 indexed pages of which 7,000 are junk will perform worse than one with 3,000 quality pages. Be selective: index only what provides value to the user and has organic traffic potential.

What's the Difference Between Blocking With robots.txt and Using noindex?

robots.txt prevents crawling: Googlebot will not visit the URL. But if that URL has external links pointing to it, Google can still index it showing only the URL without content. The noindex meta tag allows crawling but tells Google not to include it in the index. To reliably prevent indexation, the safest combination is to allow crawling (so Google reads the noindex) and use the noindex directive in the robots meta tag. Blocking with robots.txt while also adding noindex is contradictory: Google cannot read the noindex if it cannot crawl the page.

Do AI Crawlers Affect My Google Crawl Budget?

Not directly. Google's crawl budget is independent of GPTBot, ClaudeBot, or PerplexityBot activity. However, if your server has limited resources and AI crawlers generate many simultaneous requests, the server's response speed can degrade, which indirectly causes Google to reduce its crawl frequency. The solution is to monitor server logs to identify bot traffic spikes and configure rate limiting if necessary, without completely blocking the crawlers you want to keep active.

Article written by the [SEO team at Kiwop](/seo) — a digital agency specializing in software development and growth marketing. We manage multilingual sites with 7 language versions and over 1,600 indexed pages, applying the indexing practices described in this guide on a daily basis.