What Has Changed in Google’s Indexing Process?

Short Answer: Google’s indexing process has shifted from indexing nearly every crawlable page to only indexing pages and URLs that are considered relevant. This change reflects the challenge of indexing the entire web, which would demand massive resources.

Full Explanation

Previously, Google’s indexing process was broad and inclusive. When Googlebots crawled your website and found pages accessible without restrictions, those pages were indexed almost automatically. This meant that most crawlable content across the web found its way into Google’s index.

Recently, however, Google has modified this approach to focus exclusively on pages and URLs it deems relevant for indexing. The driving reason behind this change is the enormous scale of the web, which makes indexing every single page an unfeasible task requiring considerable resources.

Step-by-Step Breakdown

Earlier Approach: Crawl a website fully, then index nearly all pages found.
Current Change: After crawling, apply relevance criteria to decide which pages to index.
Result: Only pages deemed relevant by Google are actually added to the index.
Reasoning: The entire web is too vast to index completely without consuming massive resources.

Real Examples

Since the answer does not provide specific real-world examples or scenarios, it’s important to understand that any website previously benefiting from broad page indexing may now experience selective indexing based on Google’s assessment of page relevance.

Common Mistakes

Assuming that all crawlable pages will be indexed automatically, which is no longer true.
Failing to optimize pages for relevance in the expectation they will be indexed regardless.
Overlooking the importance of content quality and relevance given Google’s selective indexing approach.

FAQs

Q: Does Google still index all crawlable pages?
A: No. Google now indexes only pages and URLs it considers relevant.

Q: Why did Google make this change?
A: Because indexing the entire web requires a huge amount of resources, which is not feasible.

Key Takeaways

Google’s indexing is now more selective and relevance-driven.
Not all crawlable pages will automatically appear in Google’s index anymore.
Website owners should focus on making their pages relevant to improve chances of indexing.
This change helps Google manage resources while maintaining index quality.