Skip to main content

Indexing

Generally, the indexing' refers to a method of information acquisition (information development), through which documents are collected and classified based on keywords. Then an index is formed that is similar to a library. Indexed documents, mostly text content, are prepared for a specific document or keyword search and provided with descriptors.

If you want a keyword and related documents, ideally the most relevant content should be displayed. In a library, descriptors can be data such as author, title, or ISBN numbers. In principle, the same happens with a query on the Internet. In other words, the term indexing denotes the training of an index in which web documents are collected and classified using various descriptors (such as keywords) and made available for subsequent searches (information retrieval).

General information

Web document indexing is a huge and complex procedure, using various methods from information science, computer science, and computer linguistics. At the same time as information development (explained above) and information retrieval, another important term is data mining, which is the classification of valuable content from a large amount of data.

Several processes associated with indexing occur before a search definition is entered. Web documents must be searched and analyzed (see Crawlers, Spiders, Bots). These are collected, sorted, and indexed before they can be displayed in search engine SERPs in a particular sequence. Search engine providers like Google, Yahoo or Bing are constantly working to boost website indexing to provide the most relevant content.

Google has recently changed its index and entered the Caffeine Index. You are supposed to index web content faster through constant and synchronous searching of certain parts of the global Internet. At the same time, web content, such as videos or podcasts, is supposed to be more easily found.[1].

Practical relevance

Different consequences and possibilities arise for site operators and webmasters regarding indexing. If a web page is to be indexed and found in the index, it must first be available to the crawler or spider. If it consists of a new website, it can be sent to the search engine to be included in the index by registering it. The web must be locatable by the crawler and readable to some extent.

Meta tags, which can be listed in the header section of a web page, are one way to ensure this. They can also be used to suppress access by crawlers in order to exclude a particular page from the index. Canonical tags and other tags from the robots.txt file can also be used for this purpose. The indexing status can be retrieved in the Google Search Console. URLs already in the index are displayed on the Google Index and Indexing Status tabs. This includes those that have been blocked by the site operator.

Indexing and SEO

Indexing is very important for SEO. Webmasters and web operators can control this procedure from the beginning and ensure that web pages are crawled, indexed and subsequently displayed in the SERPs. Regardless, your position in the SERPs can only be influenced by various OnPage and OffPage measures and the provision of high-quality content.

You should also keep up to date, as Google modifies its algorithms quite regularly to exclude spam sites or link networks from the index.

Web Links