Index / Indexed Page

TL;DR

Adding all the web pages of a website to the Google index is a very important step in  making them accessible in organic searches. Although Google periodically scans the Internet for new content, it is advised that you help speed up the process by requesting indexing and submitting sitemaps in Google Search Console.

What is the Google Index?

The Google Index is a registry of all the web pages on the Internet, that Google was able to scan and include in order to make them accessible in Google Search.

Getting a web page indexed by Google

Google regularly scans the entire Internet using web crawlers that gather information. If it finds a new web page, it will attempt to add it to the index, unless the web page is marked by the owner as “noindex”. After this, the page will be a part of Google Search and users will be able to find it when performing searches. Before indexing, there is no way you can get organic traffic from Google searches. 

However, adding pages to the index can be a lengthy process. This is why it is recommended to help Google find the new page more quickly. How can you get your pages indexed faster? You need a Google Search Console account where you can add multiple websites, in order to manage them and receive stats about coverage and traffic. In the dashboard, you have a “URL Inspection” option. Add the URL of the new page here. If the page has not been indexed yet, you have the option to click “request indexing”, which will add the page to a crawl queue. This will speed up the process of getting a page indexed.

In order to add URLs to the index more efficiently, it is also recommended that you create a sitemap.xml file for your website, which has a structure of all your pages. Some platforms automatically do that for you. In Wix, the sitemap is generated and updated automatically and can be found at yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml. In the case of other platforms, you may need to generate the sitemap yourself. You can submit the sitemap in the Search Console, by clicking the “sitemaps” section and typing in “sitemap.xml”, then submitting.

If you want to see a list of all the indexed pages on your website, open a Google search and type in “site:yourdomain.com”. You may find that there are pages indexed that should not be there anymore. They may have been deleted or the content moved. In order to keep the index up to date, you can ask for a removal from the index, using the Google Removal Tool, which is connected to the Search Console account.