Getting Indexed by Search Engines
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Last Updated:
June 21, 2017 3:20 PM
Once a search engine crawls your site, it indexes the content and prioritizes its relevancy to return as a search result. This means if your site isn't indexed, it's not going to show up on search engines.
Here are common issues people encounter when trying to index their site:
- Missing submission — Search engines can't index a site unless they know your site exists. One way they find your site is if it's linked to from other sites. But, there is a more reliable way of making them aware of your site. Once you're ready, you need to identify which search engines you want your site listed on. Then, submit to those search engines to have the site crawled.
- Already indexed — Your site might already be coming up as a search result, but might be buried behind the competition. To see if your site is indexed, go to a search engine and type site:www.yourwebsiteurl.com (where 'yourwebsiteurl.com' is your domain name) in the search field. If your site displays as a result, it's indexed. Your next step is to optimize your website and improve its search engine rankings.
- Content can't be crawled — Search engines can't read websites like we do. Instead, they read the HTML code of the Web page, and the actual text that it contains. If your site includes just images, Javascript, or Flash®, then search engines might not identify content to index. For more information, see How Search Engines Read Your Page Content.
- Site contents aren't accessible — Search engines run into issues indexing sites that require registration or a password. Just like a site is programmed to keep non-registered users out, it also blocks search engines from crawling content. To fix this, submit a site map and identify accessible key pages of your website for search engine review.
NOTE: It can take weeks, even months, for search engines to index the contents of your website.
Use Search Engine Visibility to submit to search engines and track your search engine rankings. For more information, see How does Search Engine Visibility help me optimize my site?
