Are You Indexed?

I get a lot of requests for help that involve not being on the front page of Google’s search results. There are lots of reasons that can happen, and I can usually help.

Last week, I had such a request that turned out to have a very easy answer: “You’re not indexed.”

I heard those word myself, years ago when I had been given the assignment by my then employer to make our online catalog profitable. Joel, a hardware guy of our acquaintance, was over for dinner, and I was complaining about the fact that we didn’t show up for reasonable searches.

“You’re not indexed,” Joel said.

I stared at him blankly. I was already writing for the web at that time, but I didn’t know anything about SEO yet, or even any of the terminology. I think I said, “Huh?”

I don’t want you to feel this way, so let me tell you right off that Google (and this goes for the other search engines too) doesn’t actually know about websites until they visit said websites and crawl around their pages and see what they’re about, a process known as “indexing.”

You can tell if you’ve been idexed by a search engine going and typing in “site:www.mywebsite.com” at your favorite search engine. Yahoo will redirect you, but all major search engines will tell you, when you do this, how many pages they’ve indexed at your site.

If your pages have been indexed, you’re fine. If not, Yahoo and bing will invite you to submit your site to them. Google is not so inviting, but click on their name back there and you’ll be in the right spot.

Do that now. The end may not be nigh, but you have no chance of improving your search rankings or traffic until it’s done, so sooner is better.


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