Search Engine Indexing

 What is indexing?

Imagine a big city with a city directory, a giant book that lists every shop, with its name, address and what it sells. When someone asks "Where can I buy sweets near the station?", the directory helper looks in the book and points them to the right shop.

Google and Bing work like that helper. The directory is called an index.

Say Ravi opens a sweet shop called "Ravi Sweets" in a small lane. If his shop is in the directory, people searching "sweet shop near me" can find him. If it isn't, the shop exists but the helper doesn't know about it.

Indexing means a search engine has visited your web page, understood what it is about, and saved it in its list.

How a page gets indexed

1. Crawling: a search engine's robot visits your page by following a link, or by reading a list of pages you give it.
2. Indexing: if the page makes sense and is not blocked, the robot saves it.
3. Ranking: when someone searches, the search engine picks the best pages from its saved list and puts them in order.

Many beginners mix these up. Indexed does not mean first page. It only means your page is in the directory and can appear. Where it appears depends on how useful the page is.

Why indexing matters

A page that is not indexed cannot show up in search results at all, however good it is.

Example: Priya writes a great blog post called "Easy 10-minute dinner recipes". She publishes it, but Google has never seen it. When people search "10 minute dinner recipes", her post never appears. The only people who read it are those she sends the link to on WhatsApp.

So for most websites, search results are where free visitors come from. Without indexing, you only get the visitors you bring yourself.

What happens if you don't submit your website?

Nothing bad happens. You aren't punished. Your website simply stays invisible for longer.

Search engines can find new sites on their own, usually when another website links to yours. But a brand-new website has no links pointing to it, so it can wait days, weeks or sometimes longer. Submitting it tells the search engine "I'm here, please look."

Think of it as telling the directory helper in person, instead of hoping he happens to walk past your lane.

Do you need to add your site to every search engine?

No. Here is a simple guide:

Example: Meena runs a tailoring shop in Patna and wants customers in her city. Google and Bing are enough. Adding her site to Yandex or Baidu would take time and bring her almost nothing, because her customers don't use those engines.

If a business sells to the whole world, adding Google and Bing first and the others later, only if you see visitors from those countries, is a good plan.

How to submit your website, simply

Google: use Google Search Console (free). Add your website, prove that it is yours, then submit your sitemap. A sitemap is a list of all your pages, like a contents page for your website.

Bing: use Bing Webmaster Tools (free). You can import your site straight from Google Search Console, which saves time.

Blogger users: your sitemap is usually your blog address followed by /sitemap.xml. For example, yourblog.blogspot.com/sitemap.xml.

Check whether you are indexed: type site:yourwebsite.com into Google. If pages appear, they are indexed. If nothing appears, the site is not indexed yet, or it hasn't been found.

You can also use Search Console's "URL inspection" box, paste a page address, and click Request indexing. It's free and lets you ask Google to look at one page sooner. It is a request, not an order. Google decides when, and sometimes whether, to index it.

Do paid "premium indexing" services help?

For most people, no. You don't need them.

These services promise things like "get indexed in 24 hours" or "instant Google indexing" for a fee. Here is what is really going on:

• Nobody can force Google to index a page. Not you, not a paid tool. Google decides by itself.
• Many of these services just do what you can do for free: submit your sitemap and request indexing.
• Some send your link to lots of low-quality websites. That can hurt you, not help.
• Some promises are simply false, and the money is wasted.

Example: Ali pays $30 for "guaranteed indexing" of his new blog. A week later, nothing has changed. He later finds that Search Console's free "Request indexing" would have done the same thing.

Red flags: "guaranteed" results, "instant" results, or any service that asks for your Google account password.

There is one case where tools can matter. A huge website with thousands of pages, such as a news site or a big online shop, may use technical tools to tell search engines about changes quickly. One example is IndexNow, a free system supported by Bing, Yandex and a few others. As far as I know, Google does not use it. Beginners and small businesses don't need this.

Why a page may not get indexed

If your page is submitted and still doesn't show up, the cause is usually one of these:

• The page is too new. Wait a few days to a few weeks.
• The content is thin or copied. Search engines skip pages with very little useful content, or content copied from another site.
• The page is blocked. A setting such as "noindex" or a robots file tells search engines to stay away. Check this in your Blogger or website settings.
• Nothing links to it. Link to the page from your home page, your menu and your other pages.
• The site is slow or broken. If the robot can't open it, it can't save it.

A simple checklist

1. Make sure your pages have real, useful content that you wrote.
2. Add your site to Google Search Console and submit your sitemap.
3. Add your site to Bing Webmaster Tools.
4. Use "Request indexing" for your most important pages.
5. Share your link on your social media pages, so people and search engines find it.
6. Wait. Check again with site:yourwebsite.com after one or two weeks.
7. Add new, useful content regularly.

Key points to remember

• Indexing means the search engine has saved your page in its list. Without it, people can't find you through search.
• Not submitting won't punish you. Your site just stays hidden longer.
• Google and Bing are enough for most small businesses. Add the others only if your customers are in those countries.
• Indexed is not the same as ranked. Quality content decides your position.
• Premium indexing services are usually not worth it. The free tools do the same job.

Finally, nobody can promise a fixed time or a first-page position. Anyone who does is guessing or selling something.