Indexability now that not everything goes through Google

The SEO landscape is fundamentally changing. People always started their search for information with Google, but AI platforms, multimodal assistants and closed search environments are now taking over that role. This does not make indexability less important, but it does change because not everything goes through Google anymore.

What do we mean by indexability anno now?

The meaning of indexability is that your content is accessible to search engines, technically readable, and provided with structured metadata. These elements remain important, but AI-driven systems have new requirements. Your content must contain pieces that are processable as snippets so that they can be included in generated responses. However, these pieces of content must be understandably readable. Also, pieces of content must be accessible to multiple crawlers, not just Google’s

Thus, indexability is less and less about just being found. It is increasingly about being recognized, interpreted and reused, in a variety of contexts. (1)

Crawlers change, but crawlability remains essential

In addition to Googlebot, there are a growing number of AI crawlers that retrieve information for training purposes or to be used in responses. Consider the well-known ChatGPT bots from OpenAI, Gemini indexers (also from Google, but outside the classic search index) and Perplexity bots. There are also Amazon Q, Claude systems and industry-specific AI systems.

AI crawlers are often less transparent. They work with their own AI agents and cut up content into small meaningful blocks. Therefore, it’s important that your content remains quickly readable, without SEO elements blocking viewing.

In addition, make sure the text is clearly structured in separate paragraphs or blocks. Your technical settings, such as robots.txt and HTTP headers, must be set correctly. If these basics are not correct, you will lose visibility anyway, both in traditional search results, but also within AI-generated answers. (2)

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AI processability as a new layer above indexability

Being processable in AI models requires both content and technical optimization. Make sure each paragraph stands on its own and has immediate meaning. Also, work with recognizable content pieces that connect to known knowledge structures such as Wikidata or schema.org.

Also, your text structure should be consistent and predictable. For years, Google optimized to positively change click behavior. Now it is more and more about writing texts in the right context. Your job is to write texts in a way that makes them easy to snippet and semantically clear.

Broadening indexability to AI systems

For an international media company, we rewrote several types of content so that they were not only indexable in Google, but also usable in AI systems.

We broke down long articles into individual, meaningful pieces of content, with recognizable blocks and a predictable structure.

Within a few months, we saw that content not only scored better in traditional SERPs, but also appeared more often in AI-generated answers and voice assistants. This proves that indexability today is more than being found in Google. It is also increasingly about being recognized and reused in a variety of AI systems.

Not only is the layout of your content important, but you need to think about where your content ends up. Target your content exactly to these systems.

More platforms, more dependencies

With the growth of AI platforms, content ends up in more places. For example, your content ends up in voice assistants that read information aloud, interfaces that work with multiple platforms (such as combinations of Vision and LLM). Also, your information may end up in industry-specific AIs that search within niche content. (3)

Wherever your content ends up, findability depends on the proper application of technology, the structure of your texts and correc te documentation. Canonical tags, hreflang tags, sitemaps and structured data remain relevant, but these elements don’t say everything. Also be indexable by systems that don’t use a browser like Google. Some systems work with tools like Claude.

Summary

Indexability has not disappeared, it has changed. Now that not every search goes through Google anymore, it is crucial that your content is technically accessible as well as processable by a variety of crawlers and AI systems.

SEO thus shifts from “being found in Google” to “being understood in an AI system. Those who define and apply indexability broadly will remain visible, even in AI systems.