Has Google found all your pages?

Getting started

Most new users are most concerned whether Google has found all their pages. Here are a few tips to get started:

  • If your site is new, patience.... It can take a few days for your pages to appear on Google.
  • If your site is small (less than about 500 pages), simply search for your page URLs on Google. If Google shows them, then your site is on Google. In that case, if your site has good navigation, meaning that you can follow links in the page to reach any other page, then Google should be able to find all the pages on your site. If certain pages are unlinked, or require special user input (such as selecting a dropdown option) to be reached, you can tell Google explicitly to crawl those pages. You can continue to monitor whether Google knows about your pages by doing Google searches for your page URLs. You should search for page URLs rather than text, because your page might be indexed by Google, but might not appear in the first page of results.
  • If your site is larger than around 500 pages, you might consider using the Index Coverage report. If your site is smaller than that, or isn't adding new content regularly, you probably don't need to use that report.

Understanding the report

The Index Coverage report shows how much of your site Google can or can't index. Any pages that Google has tried to crawl and index are listed on this report. Remember that this report shows how many pages Google knows about and whether or not they are indexed, not about why they are ranking high or low in search results.

Index report graph, with all 4 status types selected: Error, Valid with warnings, Valid, Excluded

Each bar in the chart shows the total number of pages that Google has indexed (or attempted to index) as of that date, not the number of pages Google tried to index on that specific day.

Each URL can be in one of the following status categories:

  • Valid: Google has crawled this page, and it is in the index.
    • Next steps: Nothing! You're good.
  • Excluded : Google is aware of this page, and thinks it doesn't belong in the index for a valid reason. The specific reason, shown in the table below the chart, explains why. If you have duplicate URLs, the duplicate will be excluded, while the canonical will be valid. Other reasons for excluded include pages blocked by a robots.txt rule.
    • Next steps: If you see a large number of excluded pages, see if there is a common reason, and if so, if it's an acceptable reason. If you see spikes, examine to confirm that you haven't accidentally blocked a section of your site from crawling. You might also want to confirm that you don't have important pages in this category.
  • Valid with warnings: There's an issue here that probably should be addressed, but the page might have made it to the index, depending on the warning type.
    • Next steps : Investigate and fix these items.
  • Error: There is a problem that is keeping this URL from being indexed.
    • Next steps : Investigate and fix these items.

Basic usage

  1. Check the Coverage report monthly, or whenever you make large changes to the site (adding large amounts of new or updated content, or blocking segments of the site from crawling). Remember that changes can take a few days to reach this report. You probably don't need to monitor this report daily or even weekly when you aren't taking such actions, because Google should send you an email message when an error spike occurs. You can also view your Search Console messages in your message panel.
  2. Look for a gradually increasing count of valid indexed pages as your site grows. If you see drops or spikes, see the troubleshooting section. The status table in the summary page is grouped and sorted by "status + reason"; you should fix your most impactful errors first. Remember that it takes a few days for new content to be discovered
  3. Fix errors and warnings:
    1. Select the Error chart filter, then click into the table rows to monitor and fix issues by issue type. You can click into each issue type to see an example of affected pages, and click a page to see even more details. Use the URL Inspection tool to debug crawling and indexing issues for a specific page (you can open the tool directly from the examples table in the Coverage report). Don't forget to follow the Learn more links to get more information about each issue type.
    2. After you have investigated and fixed the errors, do the same for warnings.
  4. Periodically check for spikes in excluded items to make sure these are excluded for a good reason.

What not to look for

You should not expect all URLs on a large site to be indexed. Your goal is to get the canonical version of every page indexed. Any duplicate or alternate pages will be labeled "Excluded" in this report. Duplicate or alternate pages have substantially the same content as the canonical page. Having a page marked duplicate or alternate is a good thing; it means that we've found the canonical page and indexed it. You can find the canonical for any URL by running the URL Inspection tool. See more reasons why pages might be missing.

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