Have you ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes when you type a query into a search engine and almost instantly get a list of results?
The answer lies in crawling and indexing—a fundamental aspect of search engines.
They are fascinating processes that involve sophisticated algorithms, bots that crawl websites, and intricate indexation methods. With more than 3.5 billion searches being processed daily on Google alone, search engines rely heavily on these processes to provide the most relevant and helpful information related to a query.
For marketers serious about online visibility and search rankings, understanding how indexing and crawling work and how to optimize for it is essential. Yet, they remain the most overlooked concepts in search engine optimization (SEO).
Without effective indexing and crawling, even the best-optimized pages may remain invisible in search results, which is something no marketer wants to happen.
In this blog, we will delve deeper into the concepts of indexing and crawling, exploring why they are crucial for success, and how marketers can ensure their websites are crawled and indexed effectively in the digital landscape of 2025.
What is Crawling?
Crawling refers to the process by which search engine bots (also known as spiders, crawlers, or Googlebots) systematically browse the internet to discover and access web pages. These bots start with a list of known web addresses (URLs) and follow links from one page to another, collecting important information about each page.
As the search bots crawl a website, they access your posts and pages, read the content, and follow the internal and external links on those pages. Crawling and indexing together enable search engines to analyze websites, collect essential information from web pages, and rank the content based on their parameters.
What is Google Indexing?
Google indexing is defined as the process of analyzing and storing web pages that Googlebots have crawled. After a crawler accesses a page, the data collected is then added to a search engine index. The index is a massive database containing information about the content and characteristics of millions of web pages.
Indexing is a vital step in search engines’ process of displaying quality information to users. It allows search engines to display relevant web pages in response to search queries at the right time. However, when websites fail to align with the indexing criteria of search engines, they are flagged as crawled currently not indexed.
Why Crawling and Indexing are Important for Marketers
Indexing and crawling are the foundation of how search engines work and are the fundamental aspects of SEO. They are crucial in determining how well a website is ranked and how visible it is to users on search engines like Google. That’s why you must get Google to crawl your site, index it effectively, and make it visible online.
Let’s understand some more factors in detail that make indexing and crawling essential for marketers today;
Increase Discoverability
Crawling and indexing are the first steps for a website to get discovered by users. If search engines cannot crawl or index pages, they remain invisible to potential customers. For marketers, this means lost opportunities, as even well-optimized content won’t attract organic traffic without proper search engine accessibility.
Better Search Rankings
After a webpage is indexed, it becomes eligible to appear in SERPs. The more accessible and understandable a website’s content is to search engine crawlers, the higher the likelihood of ranking well for relevant searches. Additionally, proper indexing ensures that all pages of a website are considered for ranking on SERPs.
Avoid Indexing Issues
Without effective indexing and crawling practices, a website may face several indexing issues. This may include broken URLs, pages with redirects, robot.txt issues, and more. When not addressed correctly, these issues can potentially harm a website’s rankings and visibility, ultimately leading to poor SEO results and ROI.
Ensure Content Freshness and Updates
Marketers frequently update blogs, landing pages, and product descriptions to keep content relevant. Crawling allows search engines to revisit these updates and index the new information. This ensures that users see the most accurate version of the content, helping marketers improve trust and engagement among users.
Improve Overall SEO Performance
As mentioned earlier, indexing and crawling are the foundation of search engine optimization. Without them, advanced SEO strategies like keyword optimization, internal linking, and content marketing are useless. A properly indexed website ensures SEO efforts are made in the right direction and yield expected results.
Tips to Optimize Your Website for Crawling and Indexing
For marketers aiming to rank their websites high in search engine results, ensuring proper crawling and indexing is essential. This can be achieved through optimizing the website with specific practices focused on improving its crawlability and indexability. These practices are completely different from general SEO techniques.
Here are some effective practices that marketers can utilize to optimize their website for indexing and crawling in 2025;
Manage Site Architecture
One of the first things to start with when optimizing your site for google indexing is managing your site architecture. This means organizing your posts and pages in a way that’s easy for search engines and readers to navigate. This includes optimizing URL structure, defining clear navigation, and writing descriptive URLs.
Implement Schema Markup
Schema markup is a semantic language that helps search engines better understand your content. It involves using tags (structured data) that give search engines more context about your pages or posts. By implementing schema markup, you enable your website and its content to be visible in rich results or snippets on SERPs.
Update XML Sitemaps
An effective way to get Google to crawl your site faster is by optimizing your XML sitemap. An XML sitemap is a file that lists all the important pages and URLs on your website in an XML format. It serves as a roadmap for search engine crawlers to discover and index the content on your site and rank it in results more effectively.
Optimize Robot.txt File
A robots.txt file controls the crawling behavior of search engine bots and other web crawlers on your website. By optimizing the robot.txt file of your website, you can improve its crawl efficiency. This is because the robots.txt file tells search bots which URLs to prioritize as they crawl your site and which pages they shouldn’t crawl.
Fix Broken Links
Broken links are harmful for your website as they result in errors like crawled currently not indexed. This is because broken links disrupt the normal flow of the crawling process, which may result in poor indexing and wasted crawling resources. Rather, it is better to identify and fix broken links across the website proactively.
Leverage IndexNow Protocol
The IndexNow protocol makes indexing more efficient by instantly alerting the search engines to any changes you make on your website. With this protocol in place, search engines will crawl and index your changes faster, resulting in better chances of ranking. This is especially beneficial for websites that update content frequently.
Crawling and Indexing in a Nutshell
Crawling and indexing might sound like purely technical processes that happen in the background, but they are central to your website’s visibility and success. As the internet grows and becomes more complex, search engines will continue to refine how they discover and organize content by relying more on the indexing factors.
The good news? By optimizing your website for crawlability and indexability, you can enhance its online presence, rank higher in search results, and attract more potential customers organically. Ultimately, focusing on the indexing and crawling of your website is a way to stay ahead in the search engine optimization landscape.