Glossary
Indexability
Whether a web page can be discovered and stored in a search engine's index.
Definition
Indexability refers to whether a search engine is able to crawl, process, and add a web page to its search index — making it eligible to appear in search results. A page is indexable when it is accessible to crawlers, has no noindex directive, returns a 200 OK HTTP status code, and is not flagged as a canonical duplicate.
Why It Matters
A page cannot rank if it cannot be indexed. Indexability issues are among the most impactful and easiest-to-fix technical SEO problems. Common blockers include accidental noindex tags, crawl budget exhaustion, and incorrect canonical tags.
Examples
IndexableA page that returns HTTP 200, has no noindex tag, and is linked internally
Blocked by robots.txtDisallow: /private-pages/ in robots.txt prevents crawling
Noindex tag<meta name='robots' content='noindex'> — tells Google not to index the page
Common Mistakes
Accidentally leaving noindex tags on production pages after removing them from staging.
Blocking important CSS and JavaScript in robots.txt.
Not submitting XML sitemaps containing only indexable, canonical URLs.