Glossary · Search and local visibility
Crawlability
The practical ability of permitted crawlers to request and traverse a page or website.
Also called: crawlable
Definition
Crawlability depends on reachable links, robots rules, server responses, authentication, rendering, rate limits, and the crawler's own policy. A crawlable page can be requested and discovered; that does not guarantee indexing or ranking.
Why it matters
Important pages that crawlers cannot reach or render may never enter later search evaluation stages.
Common misunderstanding
Crawlable, indexable, indexed, and ranking are different states and should not be reported as interchangeable.
Related terms
Related system family: Measurement & Search Signals
Sources
- Crawling and indexing (opens in a new tab) · Google Search Central
- RFC 9309: Robots Exclusion Protocol (opens in a new tab) · RFC Editor / IETF
Last reviewed July 16, 2026