# What technical SEO assumptions do experienced teams still get wrong?

> Common assumptions include:

- Crawled means indexed.

- Indexed means ranking.

- A 200 response means the page is SEO healthy.

- robots.txt is an index-removal mechanism.

- Google cannot process JavaScript.

- Every crawler warning should be fixed.

- More indexed URLs means better SEO.

- A canonical is an absolute directive.

- Core Web Vitals scores guarantee ranking.

- A large URL count automatically means a crawl-budget problem.

Google's documentation explicitly separates crawling, indexing and serving, and states that technical eligibility does not guarantee indexing or ranking.

## Sources

- [Google Search Central — How Search Works](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/how-search-works)
- [Google Search Central — Essentials](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials)
- [Google Search Central — Myths About Crawling](https://developers.google.com/crawling/docs/myths-about-crawling)

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Answered by Abhinav Krishna (https://www.theseocentral.com/author/abhinav-krishna)
Source: https://www.theseocentral.com/technical-seo-faq/what-technical-seo-assumptions-do-experienced-teams-still-get-wrong
