Crawling
The process by which a search engine discovers URLs and downloads their content using automated software, before any indexing or ranking…
Crawling IndexingIndex selection
Indexing
Storing and organising a crawled page in a search engine's index so it becomes eligible to be retrieved and ranked for queries.
In full
After crawling and rendering, a search engine parses the page, extracts text, links, structured data and media, resolves the canonical among duplicates, and decides whether the page is worth storing. Indexing is selective: search engines routinely decline to index pages they judge low value, duplicative or thin. Being indexed is a prerequisite for ranking but guarantees nothing about position.
Example
Search Console's Page indexing report shows 12,000 pages 'Crawled - currently not indexed', meaning Google fetched them but chose not to store them.
Related terms
Canonicalization
The process by which a search engine groups duplicate or near-duplicate URLs into a cluster and picks one representative URL to index and…
Index bloat
A condition where a site has far more URLs indexed or crawlable than it has genuinely useful pages, diluting crawl attention and…
Crawled — currently not indexed
A Search Console status meaning Google fetched a URL but chose not to index it, usually a quality, duplication or value judgement.
URL Inspection tool
A Search Console feature showing Google's indexed state for a URL plus a live test with rendered HTML, screenshot, and page resource…
Where to read more
- Block Search Indexing with noindex · Documentation · developers.google.com
- Google Crawling and Indexing Documentation · Documentation · developers.google.com
- Google Search Essentials · Guideline · developers.google.com
- How HTTP Status Codes Affect Google's Crawlers · Documentation · developers.google.com
- How to Specify a Canonical with rel=canonical and Other Methods · Documentation · developers.google.com
- How To Use Search Console · Documentation · developers.google.com