What Are Indexing Tiers? And Why Should SEOs Care?

[Cpvr]

What Are Indexing Tiers? And Why Should SEOs Care?

Back in 2014, Prabhakar Raghavan (then VP of Search & Ads, now Google’s Chief Technologist) introduced the concept of Indexing Tiers—a core part of Google’s semantic web evolution.

Later, on the Search Off the Record podcast, Google engineers confirmed: Yes, Indexing Tiers exist.

They’ve even patented it—showing a 3-tier system that governs:
How often a site is crawled
What kind of algorithms are applied
The server priority for retrieval

Tier 1 = High authority, high frequency, expensive algorithms (think Amazon, Forbes)
Tier 2 & 3 = Limited crawl, slower refresh, lighter algorithms

In the early Google days (pre-2009), indexing was refreshed in cycles—aka the Google Dance. Then came Caffeine: real-time indexing and the need for cost-effective infrastructure.

That’s when Google quietly shifted from a simple supplemental index to a tiered system.

During the DOJ antitrust trial, Pandu Nayak (Chief of Ranking) confirmed:
“We do not run every algorithm for every document—cost matters.”

So, if your site isn’t in Tier 1, you’re not playing with the same ranking algorithm deck as the big guys.

Topical Authority is not just semantic relevance.
It’s also about Cost of Retrieval—how much Google is willing to spend on your site.

Indexing tiers shape the visibility of your content at scale.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1943447627711803633

 

[Shawn Gossman]

While it seems not typical for us to get on Tier 1 which is the fast-indexing tier, you could if you create high quality content that the mass people in your niche are trying to find.

I think the niche audience amount will likely need to be significant as well. For example, the forum owner niche is likely never going to be included in that tier because there isn't enough of us. But if your forum is about specific games that are in an extreme trend and you create content that people can't get enough of, as a massive audience, then tier 1 is likely going to be for you.

Personally, I'm okay being in the standard tiers.

But I wonder how it's impacted when you actually pay for ads. I wonder if your ad breaks away from tier indexing.