Website Indexing Check & Fix Guide: Key SEO Steps to Improve Page Indexing Rate

What is Website Indexing?

Search engine indexing (Indexing) is the process of storing web pages in a database. Only indexed pages can appear in search results. This is the foundation of SEO—pages without indexing won't have rankings or any organic search traffic. Many client websites I've taken over have had no rankings or organic search traffic for all pages over the long term: regardless of the reason, basically only the homepage and a few pages were indexed. Through analyzing client Google Search Console coverage reports, typical indexing obstacles include:

• Insufficient page quality scores (12%)
• robots.txt misinterception (28% of non-indexed cases)
• Canonical issues caused by duplicate content (22%)
• Server response anomalies (such as 5xx errors accounting for 17%)

What needs to be checked and ensured: the website is indexed (generally 2-3 days after submitting to GSC, not a big problem) and important pages are indexed (need regular checks, recommend checking at least once a month using site command or viewing GSC).

Check Website Indexing Status

Ways to Check Indexing

Google Command Check: Enter "site:yourdomain.com" (without quotes) in Google search bar. This command will display the list of currently indexed pages.

Approximately this many articles and pages

Google Search Console Check: Log in to Google Search Console, go to the "Pages" report in the left navigation bar:

Not completely matching advanced search commands either

How to bind and view Google Search Console, please read the article:

Third-Party Tool Check: Use plugins like AITDK

Same as the first method, just don't need to manually input

Verify Indexing Count

Google search command and AITDK show indexing count of 34, GSC shows indexing count of 26. Actual site page count is 33, roughly matching is fine. If you don't know the actual page count, you can check sitemap or rely on third-party tools to view page count. This is mainly important for medium and large sites, especially ensuring key sections or pages are indexed. You can also analyze different secondary sections one by one through two methods.

6 articles related to SEO are indexed

Use filters in GSC to view count

Categorize and Fix Website Indexing Issues

In search engine optimization systems, indexing failures often stem from composite problems at technical and strategic levels. According to Google's official indexing coverage report statistics, more than 80% of websites have at least three types of undetected indexing obstacles. These "invisible funnels" may cause effective content loss. I've compiled a complete fault chain from server responses to page-level directives based on Google's official manual combined with experience.

Check for Indexing Issues

• You can directly check individual pages

• You can also check batch page trends

If gray spikes dramatically, it's a big problem

• Determine what the main problem is

Generally only technical issues cause large numbers of pages to become non-indexed in a short time (using AI to batch publish low-quality pages counts as content issues)

Server Response Anomalies (5xx Errors)

When search engines request pages, servers return 500-level error codes (such as 502 Bad Gateway, 503 Service Unavailable, etc.), indicating temporary or persistent server-side failures. These errors directly block crawlers from crawling webpage content and need to be located through server log analysis combined with tools (such as Google Search Console's coverage report).

Redirect Configuration Anomalies

Includes four typical problems:

• Redirect chains too long (more than 3 jumps)
• Redirect loops (A→B→A dead loop)
• Final redirect URL exceeds character limit (more than 2,048 bytes)
• Invalid or blank URLs in redirect paths

Robots.txt Interception Risks

When pages are blocked by the robots.txt file in the website root directory through Disallow directives, search engines will not actively crawl those pages. However, note: if pages are linked by other websites or exist in submitted XML Sitemaps, there's still a possibility of being indexed. To completely prohibit indexing, you need to synchronously remove robots.txt restrictions and add "noindex" meta tags.

Active Indexing Blocking (Noindex Directive)

The <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> tag in page source code or X-Robots-Tag directive in HTTP response headers will explicitly tell search engines not to index the page. In Google Search Console's URL inspection tool, the "Indexing allowed" status will show "Blocked by noindex". You need to confirm through real-time testing whether the directive has been removed.

Soft 404 Pages

Pages display "not found" prompts but don't return standard 404 HTTP status codes, causing search engines to misjudge page validity. Common in scenarios where content is removed but correct response codes aren't configured, or custom error pages don't follow technical specifications.

Permission Verification Blocking (401/403 Errors)

401 errors require authentication, and Googlebot never provides credentials (crawlers can't log in like real users). 403 errors indicate server misconfiguration causing legitimate requests to be rejected. Solutions include: removing page access restrictions, setting up crawler whitelists (requires Search Console ownership verification), or configuring authentication-free access paths.

Crawled but Not Indexed

Divided into two states: "Crawled �?currently not indexed" and "Discovered �?currently not indexed". The former may be due to page quality assessment not yet meeting standards, while the latter is often triggered by server load protection mechanisms causing delayed crawling. This part is unrelated to Technical issues and is the most common problem. The former is because your page quality is too low, even if you force submit for indexing, it will be noindexed after a period. The latter is because you're publishing pages too fast, causing insufficient crawler quota. Generally, these two situations occur because you're (using AI) programmatically generating low-quality pages. These two problems are also most likely to be penalized by Google.

"Crawled, not indexed"

"Discovered, not indexed" - You can see the status on the right is not crawled, meaning pages are published too fast and crawler quota is insufficient

Reasonable Non-Indexed Scenarios

Not all pages need to be indexed (only pages that need SEO should appear in Google search results). Some pages even need to be excluded from indexing, such as app/dash subdomains only for user interaction, dev/test test environments, terms/policy subdirectories also don't need to appear. In addition, the following page types also don't need to be forcibly indexed:

• Redirect pages (301/302, because the target page is indexed)
• Backend management system interfaces
• Duplicate content pages with canonical tags set (because the canonical page is indexed)
• RSS feed pages (pages with /feed)

Canonical Version Identification Conflicts and Redirects

Includes three typical scenarios:

• Pages correctly declare canonical versions but are not indexed (Alternate pages)
• Canonical pages not declared, causing search engines to choose independently (Duplicate without canonical)
• Declared canonical page conflicts with search engine judgment (Canonical conflict)

Redirected URLs are not indexed as independent pages by default, but if canonical pages themselves have redirects (such as A→B and A declared as canonical), it may cause indexing logic confusion.

Fix Process

If you find important pages are not indexed:

1. Fix technical issues according to prompts (such as removing incorrect noindex tags)
2. Click the "Verify Fix" button to trigger manual review
3. Monitor "Coverage Report" update status (usually takes 3-7 business days)

After fixing the problem, click verify, and the status will update in a few days (though data will still have delays)

Tools

Google official documentation lists all non-indexing reasons and solutions, but in practice, it still heavily relies on SEO experience

Semrush Site Audit can detect indexing issues

Ahrefs Indexability can also detect indexing issues