What is indexing?
Indexing is the step in which a search engine analyses a crawled page and adds it to its search index. Only indexed pages can appear in classic results, and at Google also in AI Overviews and AI Mode, which draw on the same index.
Crawling and indexing are different things. A crawler fetches a page; whether it then enters the index is decided by the search engine based on quality, duplicates, canonical signals and noindex directives. Search Console therefore distinguishes between states such as “crawled, currently not indexed” and “discovered, currently not indexed”.
For Google’s AI features the documentation lists the same requirements as for regular Search: the page must be indexed and eligible to be shown with a snippet. There is no separate route into AI Overviews.
Other answer engines run their own crawlers and indexes or rely on search partners. Good indexing at Google is therefore necessary but no guarantee that ChatGPT or Perplexity know a page. There, access for the respective bot is an additional condition.
What it means for your website
Search Console’s URL Inspection shows the index status of individual pages. For AI search it is also worth checking whether GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot can fetch the page. A block in bot protection keeps you out of their index even if Google has long listed the page.
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Terms help you understand. Whether AI crawlers can reach your site is something you measure.
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