Indexability

Indexability describes whether a web page is eligible for consideration in a search engine's index, not whether it has actually been indexed. A page may be publicly accessible in a browser yet excluded from Google's index because of a noindex directive, a canonical selection, or other eligibility and content considerations. Crawling and indexing are different steps: robots.txt primarily controls crawler access, and a URL blocked by robots.txt can still appear in results without its content being crawled if Google discovers the address elsewhere. A service business investigating why a new location page is missing from search should check crawl access, noindex rules, canonical signals, page content, and discovery separately. Google may choose not to index an otherwise eligible page. Indexability alone does not guarantee crawling, indexing, visibility, or customer inquiries.