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Master Digital Academy

Indexing, sitemaps and robots.txt

⏱ 3 min lesson🧩 Small simple steps📱 Works on your phone
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Picture this: You can write the best page in the world, but if Google does not index it, nobody will find it. This lesson is about the plumbing: making sure Google can find, read and keep your pages.

How Google keeps your page 🚪

🗺️

SitemapA list of the pages you want Google to know.

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🚧

robots.txtA sign saying which rooms to skip.

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🔒

noindexA lock that says: do not keep this page.

Check these three and Google can find and keep your pages.

What you will learn

  • What a sitemap and robots.txt do.
  • How to read the Pages report in Search Console.
  • Common reasons pages are not indexed.

Quick definitions

  • Sitemap: a list of the pages you want Google to know about.
  • robots.txt: a file that tells crawlers which areas to skip.
  • noindex: a tag that tells Google not to keep a page.

Warning: a single wrong line in robots.txt (Disallow: /) can block the whole site. Always check it after launch.

Try it now (20 minutes)

  1. Open yoursite.com/robots.txt and read it line by line.
  2. Open yoursite.com/sitemap.xml and confirm it lists the right pages.
  3. In Search Console, open Pages and note each reason given for non-indexed pages.

Mistake museum: Leaving “Discourage search engines” ticked after launch. The site is perfect and invisible.

Hinglish tip: Launch ke din robots.txt aur noindex zaroor check karo.

Checklist

  • I can read a robots.txt file.
  • I submitted a sitemap in Search Console.
  • I know three reasons a page might not be indexed.

Tools you will use: Google Search Console