Why a hidden profile stays hidden
Search, the directory, and the sitemap only carry creators who are live. That is a product rule, not an SEO trick.
The directory query is simple: live, and not shadowbanned. A profile that has not finished bank, identity, and the agreement has is_live set to false. It does not appear in search. It does not appear on a shareable card. It is not in the sitemap crawlers read.
That feels slow when you have just signed up. It is the reason a brand can treat a card as a person. If we indexed every account on day one, the first page of results would be empty bios and the answer engines would quote them.
When you do go live, the card, the handle URL, and the sitemap entry show up together. Growth of the index follows growth of verified people, not growth of signups.