Indexed ≠ Visible: The Selection Layer in AI Mode Search
AI Mode turns one question into many retrieval tasks. Visibility is governed by a selection layer beyond indexing and ranking—here’s how to diagnose and adapt.
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Recommended entry points for SEO. Or explore the topic hub: SEO & Search.
- Modern SEO in 2026: Visibility, Indexing, and Why Keywords Are Not the Unit
A pillar page for modern SEO: how indexing works now, why visibility shifted to AI surfaces, and how to build topic authority without spam.
- Google indexing explained: why pages are stored, ignored, or forgotten
A practical model of Google’s indexing decision (discovery → crawl → dedupe/canonical → store → refresh), plus the core entry pages that explain why URLs fail at the storage layer.
- Indexed but not visible (2026): why indexing doesn’t guarantee traffic
In 2026, 'indexed' is an internal bookkeeping state, not a promise of traffic. This pillar explains the missing layer between indexing and visibility: retrieval and interpretation. If your page gets crawled (even indexed) and still gets no traffic, the system is not confused — it is being conservative.
SEO
Index selection (2026): why Google crawls your pages but refuses to store them
“Crawled — currently not indexed” is not a verdict on your writing. It is an index selection decision: Google is choosing what becomes core memory for your site. This essay explains the mechanism, how to diagnose whether you’re failing hard gates or priority, and what changes the outcome without creating noise.
Which questions are no longer worth answering (2026): AI killed the click, not the query
In 2026, many queries still exist, but the click is gone: AI Overviews and assistants compress answers into the interface. This page gives a practical model: which question types became “compressible”, which still reward original work, and how to write content that earns distribution (not just indexing).
Crawled but not indexed reasons (2026): 9 causes and what to do first
If Google crawled your page but did not index it, the bottleneck is rarely “one on-page fix”. This page lists the most common causes (technical gates + prioritization), how to tell them apart fast, and the few actions that reliably change the outcome.
Indexed but not visible in search (2026): what it means and how to diagnose it
If a page is indexed but not visible in search, the failure is usually not “indexing” — it’s retrieval and selection. This page defines the symptom, shows the fast diagnosis path in GSC, and points you to the right fix depending on whether you have impressions, rankings, or nothing at all.