What is "indexability"?

Indexability is a page's ability to get into the search index after a bot has crawled it.

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#In simpler terms:

Even if a page is accessible for crawling, that doesn't mean it will show up in search. Crawlability means the bot can reach it. Indexability means the bot decided: "this page is worth adding to the index".

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#What affects indexability:

1. Meta tags

• <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> - blocks indexing.
• <meta name="robots" content="index"> - allows it.

2. HTTP headers

• Code 200: everything is fine;
• 301/302: a redirect, not indexed;
• 404/500: an error, also won't make it into the index.

3. Canonical URLs (rel="canonical")

• If a page is marked as a duplicate, only the original gets indexed.

4. Duplicates and thin content

• If there are many identical or empty pages, the search engine may ignore some of them.

5. Blocking in robots.txt

• If the bot couldn't read the page, there's nothing to index.

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#Conclusion:

Crawlability is about whether the bot reaches the page. Indexability is about whether the page makes it into search. You can have a great site, but without indexability it stays invisible in the results.