Google Index is a database of billions of web pages Google has crawled and stored to show in search results.
If your website pages are not indexed in Google, your website will not show up in results.
All of the data Google compiles is put in a structured index, which allows Google to scan all of its content and match search queries with relevant results.
Here's how whole Google indexing works -
Crawling: Googlebot crawls the whole web and looks for newly updated web pages.
Indexing: Google analyzes those pages and stores them in a vast database.
Ranking: Google’s algorithm then picks the best search results from its index and shows them in search results.
How to know if your website is indexed on Google or not –
- Go to Google.
- In the search bar, type in the “site:” search operator followed by your domain (e.g., site:yourdomain.com)
- Under the search bar, you will see how many of your pages are ranked.
If zero pages show up, it means Google does not index your website.
You can check if your website is indexed in this way. Although it’s not the most practical way, it won’t be easy to find pages that are not indexed.
If your website pages are indexed, Google will show them as results like above.
How do you get your website indexed on Google?
If your website is new, Google will take days to a few weeks to index it. Indexing usually takes time. You can use GSC to request that Google index your website.
GSC is a free Google tool that helps you check your website presence on Google and troubleshoot any issues.
Create and submit a sitemap -
An XML sitemap contains a file that lists all the URLs of your website that you want Google to index. XML sitemap tells Google which pages are essential once you have the URL of your website sitemap.
You will likely find your website sitemap on this URL: https://jatinthakur.com/sitemap.xml
Go to the “Sitemap” section of your GSC. Google Search Console then take a couple of days to process. When it’s done, you will use the link to your sitemap and a green “success” status in the report.
URL Inspection tool -
Use the URL inspection tool in Google Search Console to check the status of a specific URL. Then enter the URL into “URL Inspection” search bar at the top.
If you see a green tick “URL is on Google” status, this means inspected URL has been crawled and indexed by Google.
Let’s say you see the “URL is not on Google” status, this means inspected URL is not indexed and not appearing in Google SERPs. Click on Request Indexing Button.
