How does Google find relevant pages?

Google has to discover your page, fetch it and process it before it can appear in search. When someone searches, Google finds possible answers among the pages in its index.

A sitemap lists your URLs for Google. A link also helps it discover a page. Neither guarantees that the page will be indexed or rank for your chosen query.

Four different steps

• Discovery: Google learns that the URL exists.
• Crawling: Google fetches the page’s content.
• Indexing: Google processes the page and may store it for search.
• Retrieval: after someone searches, Google finds indexed pages that could answer the query.

An indexed page is available for search. It won’t be a possible answer to every query. A chain-replacement guide has a reason to appear for chain-repair searches; it has little reason to appear for tax advice.

Make the page’s subject clear

Use a URL, title and main heading that describe the question or subject. Explain that subject directly in the page’s text. Links from related pages can also describe it through their anchor text.

Google can match related wording. “Replace a bicycle chain” and “change a bike chain” can refer to the same subject. You don’t need to repeat every variation throughout the page.

A title such as “Our solutions” leaves the subject unclear. “Bike chain replacement in London” identifies the service and location.

Check the page in URL Inspection

Open Search Console’s URL Inspection tool and enter the page’s URL. Check whether it is indexed and whether Google selected a different URL as the main version.

If it isn’t indexed, check the reported reason. Make sure the page opens successfully, doesn’t contain a noindex instruction and isn’t blocked from crawling. Use the live test to check what Google can currently fetch.

Fix any access problem you find. Then compare your page with the results for your target query and check its backlinks and internal links.

Use the stages to find the problem

The diagram separates these steps to help you investigate. Knowing a URL exists, indexing it and choosing it for a query are different things.

Start with the step you can check. If Google has already indexed the page, repeatedly submitting its URL doesn’t explain why competing pages rank above it.