Index
The index is the searchable copy of the web a search engine keeps. If a page is not in it, that page cannot appear in results.
In a little more detail
Being crawled and being indexed are different events. A page can be visited, understood, and then deliberately left out, which is why a page can be missing without anything looking broken.
Related terms
- Crawler: A crawler is a program that visits web pages on its own and copies what it finds, so a search engine or AI search can use the contents later.
- noindex: noindex is an instruction in a page's code telling search engines not to include it in results.
- Sitemap: A sitemap is a file listing the pages on your site that you want machines to know about.
See it on your own site
The scan reads your site the way AI search does and reports where you stand on this and sixteen other checks.