# What is the difference between crawling, rendering, indexing, ranking and serving?

> Crawling Google discovers and fetches URLs.

### Rendering

Google executes relevant JavaScript to obtain the rendered page.

### Indexing

Google processes the content and decides whether/how it should be represented in the index.

### Ranking

For a search query, Google's systems determine the ordering of eligible results using many signals.

### Serving

Google presents results to the user.

These are different stages. Solving a crawling problem does not automatically solve a ranking problem.

## Sources

- [Google Search Central — How Search Works](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/how-search-works)
- [Google Search Central — Javascript SEO Basics](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/javascript/javascript-seo-basics)

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Answered by Abhinav Krishna (https://www.theseocentral.com/author/abhinav-krishna)
Source: https://www.theseocentral.com/technical-seo-faq/what-is-the-difference-between-crawling-rendering-indexing-ranking-and-serving