Index - The Database of a Search Engine

Definition

The index is the database of a search engine in which all crawled and analyzed web pages are stored. Only indexed pages can appear in search results. In digital marketing, the goal is to prepare relevant content both technically and substantively so that it can be seamlessly included in the index.

Examples

• Google Index: contains billions of web pages
• Indexing through crawling by bots
• “Noindex” tag: prevents a page from being included in the index

Benefits

• Visibility in search engines is only possible through indexing
• Control over which content is discoverable
• Enables ranking and organic traffic