Search engines
Indexing
Indexing is when a search engine stores a page in its database so the page becomes eligible to appear in results. Crawling and indexing are separate steps: a page can be crawled and then not indexed, which Google reports as "Crawled, currently not indexed". A page that is not indexed cannot rank for anything, regardless of how well it is written.
Google Search Console reports indexing status per page, with a reason attached when a page is excluded. The reasons are specific and worth reading rather than skimming, because "Duplicate without user-selected canonical" and "Discovered, currently not indexed" call for entirely different fixes.
Not being indexed is usually a quality or duplication signal rather than a technical fault, once obvious blockers are ruled out. Thin pages, near-identical pages generated from a template, and pages with no internal links pointing at them are the common cases on agent sites.
Submitting a sitemap helps a search engine discover pages. It does not oblige anyone to index them, and resubmitting a sitemap will not fix a page excluded for quality reasons.
Why it matters
Checking how many pages are actually indexed, rather than how many were published, is the fastest way to find work that is producing nothing.
Related terms
Related reading
Last reviewed 2026-09-04. All Saige glossary terms.