Indexing

Indexing is the middle step of three, and mixing them up costs people a lot of time. First Google crawls, which means a program visits your page and reads it. Then it indexes, which means it keeps a copy and files it under the subjects it found. Only then comes ranking, which decides where your page sits against everyone else's. A page that is not indexed cannot rank at all, because it is not in the list Google searches through.

The three steps happen quickly and out of sight, so most owners never watch them. There is a simple check. Search Google for your own web address and see what comes back. If your pages appear, they are indexed. If a site that has been live for months returns almost nothing, something is holding the door shut.

The most common cause is one word left behind. A page can carry a hidden instruction called noindex, which asks Google to forget it. Developers add it while a site is being built, so half-finished pages stay out of sight. On launch day somebody has to remove it, and sometimes nobody does. Whole sites sit invisible for a year because of one line nobody thought to look at. It is the first thing Linkysoft checks when a client says the visitors never arrived.

The second cause is a file called robots.txt, which tells search programs where they may not go. Block a folder there and every page inside it drops out, including the ones you sell from. The third cause is quieter. Google may read a page, decide it adds nothing to what already exists, and keep no copy. Three lines of text under a product photo is often not enough, and copying the maker's description word for word makes it worse.

Getting back in is not instant. You can ask for another look through Search Console, Google's free tool for site owners, and it may still take days or weeks. Clean addresses, real text on every page and links from the home page all help, which is why indexing is decided while a site is being designed and built, not after. On a large catalogue it becomes a real engineering problem, and Linkysoft raises it in the first meeting for any web application that will hold thousands of pages. Before you accept a new site from anyone, ask them to show you one of its pages in Google a week after launch.