Crawling vs. Indexing vs. Rendering
The three separate steps a page has to pass before it can show up in search results.
What it means
Crawling is a search engine's bots visiting your page. Rendering is actually loading it, including any content that JavaScript builds after the page loads. Indexing is deciding to store the page and consider it eligible to rank. A page can be crawled but not indexed, or crawled and rendered but still left out of the index if it's seen as low-value or duplicate.
Why it matters
"Google hasn't found my page" and "Google found my page but won't index it" are two very different problems with different fixes, and it's easy to lump them together. Knowing which stage a page is stuck at tells you what's actually worth fixing.
ask datanephew
My page isn't showing up in search — where is it stuck?
Ask datanephew to check its crawling and indexing status in Search Console — it can usually tell you whether the page was never crawled, was crawled but not indexed, or is indexed but just not ranking well.
Does a new page show up in search right away?
Not usually — it needs to be crawled, rendered, and indexed first, which can take anywhere from days to weeks. Ask datanephew to check the current status if it's been a while.