Indexing
The process of Google storing your page in its database so it can appear in search results.
Indexing is a search engine storing your page so it can be returned in results. It is separate from crawling: a page can be fetched and still not indexed, because the engine judged it duplicate, thin or low value. Being crawled, being indexed and ranking are three distinct stages, and problems can appear at any of them.
Definition
Indexing is the process by which search engines store and organize web pages in their database (index). After Googlebot crawls a page, it analyzes the content, determines its topic, and adds it to Google's index — making it eligible to appear in search results.
Pages can be excluded from the index by: noindex meta tag, robots.txt blocking, canonical to another URL, or low quality content.
Why It Matters
If your page is not indexed, it does not exist in Google search. You can have the best content in the world, but if Google cannot index it, nobody will find it. Check index status in Google Search Console.
Example
A JavaScript-heavy SPA renders content client-side only. Googlebot's JavaScript rendering queue has delays, resulting in pages taking weeks to index. Fix: implement server-side rendering (SSR) or static generation (SSG).
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