A STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE TO CHECKING THE INDEX STATUS OF YOUR WEB PAGES ON Google
SEO Company Scotland , Whether it’s through text, video, GIFs or screenshots, step-by-step instructions are essential for sharing knowledge within your business. Detailed instructions help to shorten the learning curve for end-users, reduce errors, and increase productivity.
Step-by-step guides also provide consistency and reduce costs by aligning processes with company standards. This can improve customer satisfaction and loyalty as well.
1. Google Search Console
Google Search Console provides webmasters with a range of data and insights into the health of their website from both a technical and user experience perspective. One useful tool is the index status report which lets you see a colorful chart of how well your site’s pages are being indexed on Google. It can help you quickly identify any issues that may be preventing your page from appearing in searches, and it can provide tips on how to fix the problem.
If a page is not indexed, it will be marked as Error in the chart (and you can click on each error to learn more about what the issue is and how to fix it). You might also see a page that has been excluded from the index (for example, because of a noindex tag) or a valid with warnings, which means that while the page has been indexed by Google, there are some errors with the content that the crawler encountered or other factors that need to be addressed.
You can also access a list of manual actions that Google has taken against your site by clicking on the “Manual Actions” section within the left-hand navigation panel in GSC. This report will include a description of each manual action that has been taken and a sample of the affected pages. If you are concerned about a particular manual action, you can submit a request to have it reviewed by Google. This can take anywhere from a few days to a week, and Google will email you when the review has been completed. If the problem has been resolved, you can also use the request indexing tool to get your page reindexed more quickly.
2. Google Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster Tools, formerly known as Google Search Console is a powerful tool that allows website owners to communicate directly with Google. This platform is critical for any site owner, and provides valuable insights into the health of a site’s presence on Google. This includes the ability to swiftly identify issues such as crawl errors, manual penalties, an increase in 404 pages, and even the detection of malware.Fife Electrical Services
The dashboard page of Google Webmaster Tools gives you an overview of any important messages or critical issues that may need your attention. This is where you can also request indexing or deindexing of specific pages, see a list of all indexed pages, and review other key metrics such as load time.
For a deeper look into the index status of your pages, head over to the “Index Status” tab. Here you can view a list of all the pages currently in Google’s search engine index, along with their current ranking position and how many impressions they’ve received (i.e. the number of people who’ve clicked on the page). You can even use this tool to demote a particular page from search results, which is useful for keeping pages such as free downloadable content or newsletter signups from being indexed and shown to everyone else.
Another great feature of this tab is the “Coverage” report, which offers an in-depth look at how much of your website has been indexed by Google. You can also get suggestions on improving your website’s visibility such as by implementing structured data or improving mobile friendliness. This is a valuable tool for any business website, especially those who have multiple blogs or pages dedicated to different types of content.
3. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a free tool that can help you determine the index status of your web pages on Google. This tool tracks the amount of time visitors spend on your website, what pages they look at, and where they came from. It also shows you the number of pages that are indexed on your site, and which ones have not been indexed yet.
Once upon a time, it was possible to rank for keywords in Google search just by stuffing those words into the page’s meta tags. Today, that practice has been largely eradicated, and the best way to get your pages indexed is by providing them with valuable content that users want to see.
To check the index status of your pages, simply log into Google Analytics and navigate to the Property level report (under the “Behavior” menu). Click on “Indexing,” and then on “Pages.” Here you will find a list of all of your pages that have been indexed, as well as the number of un-indexed pages.
The next section of the report provides detailed information about why these pages are not indexed. It is important to note that there are several reasons why a page may not be included in the Google index, and each reason has its own set of issues that need to be addressed.
For example, the “Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user” reason indicates that duplicate content is present on the website, and that canonical tags need to be added indicating which page is preferred by Google. Another common reason for not being indexed is that the page is new, and it can take some time for Google to crawl and index newly-created pages.
4. Google Webmaster Tools – Indexing Report
A key aspect of any SEO or digital marketing strategy is determining the index status of your web pages on Google. The Page Indexing Report in Google Webmaster Tools is a great tool that can help you with this. The Index Coverage Report provides a detailed overview of how Google views your website and can be used to identify issues that could be impacting your search engine visibility.
The Index Coverage Report provides a bird’s eye view for the number of indexed pages and also shows you which pages are not indexed. This allows you to identify any issues quickly and easily and work on resolving those issues. The Index Coverage Report can be categorized into four different statuses: Valid, Valid with warnings, Excluded, and Error. Each status has a more specific description as to what might be wrong. It is recommended that you review the Index Coverage Report at least monthly, and ideally weekly for more active websites.
Generally, you will want to focus your efforts on fixing the Errors first, since these are the pages that are not getting indexed and likely because of some issue that needs to be addressed. Some examples of errors might include pages that are redirecting or have a canonical tag that is not working properly.
Other reasons why a page may not be indexed would include it is too similar to another URL or the content of the page has been duplicated. In these cases, it is recommended that you work with your webmaster to address the duplicate content. Finally, the “Google chose different canonical than user” error is often an indicator that there are issues with canonical tags on your website.
5. Google Webmaster Tools – Indexing Status Report
The Indexing Status Report in Google Webmaster Tools is an excellent resource for checking the indexing status of your web pages on Google. Using this tool can help you determine how many of your pages are indexed and if there are any errors that might prevent your pages from being indexed. This report also helps you to identify duplicate content issues, which are often overlooked by webmasters and can negatively impact a website’s ranking in search results.
To get started with the Indexing Status Report, log on to Google Webmaster Tools and select your property from the left-side navigation panel. Then click on Page indexing in the top menu.
Once the Pages Indexing page opens, you’ll be able to view all of the pages on your website that are either indexable or not. You can then sort the pages by their indexing status and see a breakdown of all the possible reasons that a page may be not indexable.
One of the most common messages you might see in this report is “Page with redirect”. This indicates that a page on your site is directing to another URL and Google can’t crawl and index the destination page. This is typically a non-issue and doesn’t require any further action.
Other important messages you may see are “Valid” or “With warnings”. These indicate that your pages are in the Google index, but there are some issues with the content of these pages that you need to address. You can use the “Validate fix” option in the Indexing Status Report to have Google re-crawl your pages and update the index once you’ve made any necessary changes. This can be very helpful if you are trying to correct a specific issue with a single page on your website.
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