Magento reindexes automatically whenever one or more items change. Actions that trigger reindexing include price changes, creating catalog or shopping cart price rules, adding new categories, and so on. To optimize performance, Magento accumulates data into special tables using indexers. As the data changes, the indexed tables must be updated—or reindexed. Reindexing is performed as a background process, and your store remains accessible during the processes.
To access the index management screen, go to System > Index Management.
You can reindex in any of the following ways:
- using a cron job (preferred)
- using console command which reindexes selected indexers, or all indexers, one time only.
php bin/magento indexer:reindex [indexer]