Indexing

How it works

• Search engines crawl (visit) a page, then decide whether to index (store) it.
• Only indexed pages can appear in results.
• Pages can be left out on purpose (a noindex tag) or by accident (errors, duplicates, thin content).
• Google Search Console shows which pages are indexed and why others are not.

What can go wrong (example scenario)

A new website launched with a "noindex" setting left on from testing. It looked fine to visitors, but Google dropped every page, and the business vanished from search for three weeks.

How WILDCARD handles it

Managed Search watches which pages are indexed each month and fixes the ones that fall out.

• A new blog post shows up in Google a few days after it is published.
• A thank-you page is kept out of search on purpose.
• A duplicate page is merged so the main one gets indexed.

A question owners ask

How long does a new page take to show up in Google?

Anywhere from a day to a few weeks. Submitting it in Search Console and linking to it from your other pages speeds that up.