How To Check If Google Has Indexed Your Site

Once you’ve invested time and money in creating your website, you want to ensure it’s seen by your target audience. Whether you’re a seasoned expert or just starting out, knowing how to check if Google has indexed your site is an essential part of optimizing your online presence.

In today’s blog, we’ll discuss what indexing is and how Google chooses what web pages to index. We’ll also talk about 3 (free!) tools you can use to check if your site is indexed correctly on Google.

What Is Indexing?

Two essential components of how search engines work are crawling and indexing. Crawling refers to how search engine bots, also known as spiders, discover and access website pages. Before a search engine can decide to index a specific page or show it in search results, it needs to crawl it. Indexing is the method search engines use to store and organize a website’s content within its database. If a page isn’t indexed, it won’t show in search results. 

While it may sound complex, the crawling and indexing process for search engines is actually quite simple. After you’ve published content on your site, Google bots crawl your site and review its pages. Google bots will then analyze your website’s content, including the text on your site, images and videos, and the overall sitemap layout. 

After initial review, Google bots will determine if your page meets indexing requirements. If it does, your site will be indexed and shown in search results. If your site doesn’t meet the right requirements, Google will choose not to index it.

3 Ways To Check If Your Site Is Indexed By Google

Checking to see if your site is indexed by Google isn’t as complex as it sounds. There are many different methods that you can use—these are three of the most common ones:

URL Inspection Tool in Google Search Console

Google Search Console (GSC) is a free SEO tool that Google provides. The URL Inspection Tool in Google Search Console provides information about the indexing of specific URLs on your website, helping you to pinpoint any errors that are preventing indexing. This tool also provides you with information about structured data, video, linked AMP, and indexing/indexability. The URL Inspection Tool is free and provides accurate data, but it also requires you to set up Google Search Console for your website.

 

Page Indexing Report in Google Search Console

Similar to the URL Inspection Tool, the Page Indexing Report in Google Search Console also allows you to check what web pages on your site are indexed. However, the data from the Page Indexing Report isn’t always as fresh as the URL Inspection Tool. Its reports are also limited to 1,000 URLs, so if you have a large site, this may not be the right tool for you.

 

“Site:” Command 

Using the site: command is the quickest way to see if a web page is indexed on Google, and you can use it without having to set anything up. However, it’s not as reliable as other tools, and it may not display all of the pages on your site, especially if your site is large.

 

What If My Site Or Page Isn’t Indexed? 

If you want your site to be seen by potential customers on Google, indexing is critical for your business. If your site isn’t indexed, it won’t appear in Google search results, much less rank high enough to be seen. Here are a few factors that may impact your indexing status: 

• Noindex: If your site has a “noindex” tag in its HTML, Google will not index it. This is typically something you (or your development or hosting partner) would set on the backend of your website.
• Site structure: When bots crawl a website, they follow links to discover pages. If a page is orphaned, meaning it doesn’t have any internal links pointing to it, crawlers may have a hard time finding your page for indexing.
• Sitemap: A sitemap lists all (or most of) a website’s pages and maps out the relationships between them. Sometimes, bots will use a sitemap to determine what pages on a website to index. If a page is not included on your website’s sitemap, it may be harder for crawlers to find the page.

Don’t Let Technical SEO Be The Missing Piece Of Your Digital Marketing Strategy.

You want your website to be seen by your target audience. We help make that happen. At 434 Marketing, we’re highly familiar with Google’s indexing requirements and how technical SEO can support your site being indexed by Google. Our team has years of experience in working with Google Search Console and other core technical SEO tools to help your organic search efforts.