Skip to content 
If users do not interact with your page in Google search results, it may be removed from the search results or even from the index.
Martin Splitt of Google confirmed this information in a recent video on the Google Search Central YouTube channel.
This is also corroborated by statements made by Google as far back as 2019, information disclosed during the U.S. Department of Justice’s antitrust investigation, and a data leak.
Here’s a quote from the video:
“If your page doesn’t appear in search results, it’s possible that the query is too unusual or not searched for very often, or that we found other pages that we believe can help the user more than yours. This is a performance issue that’s likely related to the content on your page. So it’s worth checking this out, especially if pages are disappearing from the index. This means we thought the page might be useful, but we saw that users aren’t using it in search. We decided to give it a chance, but it seems other pages are doing a better job of fulfilling this purpose.”
Martin Split continues:
“So it’s important to understand that for a page to appear in search results, it must go through several stages. First, we need to know that it exists (this is the discovery stage). Second, we need to visit the page to understand what’s on it. After that, we can add it to the index. And only then, when a user enters a query that we believe this page can answer, can we display it in the search results. This is what’s called ranking.”
The site helps during the first stage—the discovery stage. Using the sitemap, Google learns that a page exists on this site. If it’s indexed, that means we’ve discovered it, and it’s in the database. But if your page doesn’t appear in search results, it could mean that the search query was too rare or that Google found other pages that better match the query.
Google also notes that if pages disappear from the index, this may indicate that they do not interest users and do not match their search queries as well as other pages do.
This is yet another reason to focus on creating content that will be interesting and useful to users. Your pages need to be user-friendly and appealing to visitors, while also keeping them engaged. This will not only help improve user interaction and increase conversions, but also boost the chances that your pages will remain in Google’s index.
