The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.
Every website relies on Google to some extent. It’s simple: your pages get indexed by Google, which makes it possible for people to find you. That’s the way things should go.
However, that’s not always the case. Many pages never get indexed by Google[1].
If you work with a website, especially a large one, you’ve probably noticed that not every page on your website gets indexed, and many pages wait for weeks before Google picks them up.
Various factors contribute to this issue, and many of them are the same factors that are mentioned with regard to ranking — content quality and links are two examples. Sometimes, these factors are also very complex and technical. Modern websites that rely heavily on new web technologies have notoriously suffered from indexing issues in the past[2], and some still do.
Many SEOs still believe that it’s the very technical things that prevent Google from indexing content, but this is a myth. While it’s true that Google might not index your pages if you don’t send consistent technical signals as to which pages you want indexed or if you have insufficient crawl budget, it’s just as important that you’re consistent with the quality of your content.
Most websites, big or small, have lots of content that should be indexed — but isn’t. And while things like JavaScript do make indexing more complicated, your website can suffer from serious indexing issues even if it’s written in pure HTML. In this post, let’s address some of the most common issues, and how to mitigate them.
Reasons why Google isn’t indexing your pages
Using a