Getting Indexed by Search Engines
Once a search engine crawls your Website, it indexes the content and prioritizes its relevancy to return as a search result. This means if your Website isn't indexed, it's not going to show up on search engines.
Here are common issues people encounter when trying to index their Website:
- Missing submission — Search engines can't index a Website unless they know your Website exists. One way they find your Website is if it's linked to from other Websites. But, there is a more reliable way of making them aware of your Website. Once you're ready, you need to identify which search engines you want your Website listed on. Then, submit to those search engines to have the Website crawled.
- Already indexed — Your Website might already be coming up as a search result, but might be buried behind the competition. To see if your Website 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 Website 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 Website 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 Websites that require registration or a password. Just like a Website is programmed to keep non-registered users out, it also blocks search engines from crawling content. To fix this, submit a Website 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 Website?
