How to check whether Google has indexed your website
Crawled, indexed and served are three different things. How to check each one properly, and what every Search Console status actually means.
Entrovix AIAug 17, 2026 11 min read
The question "is my site on Google" hides three separate questions, and mixing them up is why people spend weeks fixing the wrong thing.
Crawling, indexing and serving are not the same
| Stage | What happens | Failing here means |
|---|---|---|
| Crawling | Google requests the URL and reads the response | Google has never seen the page's content |
| Indexing | Google processes it and decides whether to store it | Google saw the page and chose not to keep it |
| Serving | Google shows it for a query, ranked against everything else | The page is stored but nothing surfaces it |
The distinction has a practical consequence. A crawling failure is a technical fault you can fix today. An indexing refusal is usually a judgement about quality, which no configuration change addresses. And a serving problem is a competition problem, which is a different job entirely.
The 30-second check
Search Google for site:yourdomain.com. The result count is rough and sometimes wrong, but the shape of the answer is informative.
- Nothing at all: the site is not indexed. Go to the blocked-entirely section below.
- Far fewer results than you have pages: partial indexing, which is the most common situation and the one worth investigating.
- Far more results than you have pages: something is generating URLs: parameters, filters, or a duplicated section.
- Roughly the right number: indexing is fine and any problem you have is a serving problem.
Treat this as an indicator rather than a report. The site: operator can miss pages that are genuinely indexed, which is why the next step is not optional.
The real check: Search Console
Google Search Console (opens in a new tab) is free and is the only place Google tells you what it actually did. Everything else in this article is inference; this is the record.
URL Inspection, for one page
Paste any URL and it reports whether the page is indexed, which canonical Google chose, when it was last crawled, and what stopped it if it is not there. This is the single most useful button in SEO and most site owners have never pressed it.
The Pages report, for the whole site
It splits every known URL into indexed and not-indexed with a reason for each. The reasons are precise, and they are where the answer usually is.
| Status | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Discovered — currently not indexed | Google knows the URL exists but has not fetched it | Usually a signal about site quality or crawl budget, not about this page. Publish less, better |
| Crawled — currently not indexed | Google fetched it and declined to store it | A quality judgement. Make the page genuinely more useful, or accept it |
| Duplicate, Google chose a different canonical | Google indexed another URL instead of this one | Check whether that was intentional. If not, your canonical or internal links disagree with what you want |
| Alternate page with proper canonical tag | Working as configured; this page points elsewhere on purpose | Nothing, unless the canonical is wrong |
| Excluded by noindex tag | The page tells Google not to index it | Intentional, or a staging setting that shipped |
| Blocked by robots.txt | Google was not allowed to fetch it | Check the rule. Note this does not remove the URL from results |
| Soft 404 | The page returns 200 but looks empty or like an error | Return a real 404, or put real content on it |
| Page with redirect | The URL redirects, so the destination is indexed instead | Normal. Only a problem if it redirects somewhere unintended |
If nothing at all is indexed
Work through these in order. The cause is almost always one of the first three.
- 1A site-wide noindex left over from staging. Check the page source and the X-Robots-Tag header, and in WordPress the Search engine visibility checkbox under Settings → Reading.
- 2robots.txt blocking everything. A Disallow: / under User-agent: * is correct on a staging server and catastrophic on a live one.
- 3The site is genuinely new. Indexing takes days to weeks, and a site with no inbound links can take longer. This is not a fault.
- 4The domain has a history. A previously penalised domain carries that with it. Check Search Console for manual actions.
- 5Everything is behind JavaScript or a login. If the server's response contains no content, there is nothing to index.
Helping Google find the rest
Discovery is the cheapest thing to improve, and three actions cover it.
- Submit an XML sitemap in Search Console and reference it from robots.txt with a Sitemap: line. That covers every crawler rather than just Google.
- Link to the page from somewhere a reader would plausibly click. Internal links are how crawlers actually travel, and orphan pages are common after a redesign.
- Request indexing through URL Inspection for genuinely important new pages. It works occasionally and is not a queue you can push through at scale.
If you do not have a sitemap at all, the sitemap generator will produce one. If you have one and are not sure it is being read, the analyser above answers that.
What indexing does not get you
Being indexed means eligible to appear, not appearing. A page can be perfectly indexed and rank nowhere, which is a serving problem and a completely different investigation: why your website is not ranking works through that one in order.
Indexed and invisible is the normal state of most pages on the internet. Indexing is the entry fee, not the prize.
Questions people actually ask
How long should indexing take?
For an established site with internal links pointing at the new page, days. For a new site with no links, weeks, and some pages will be crawled and declined. If nothing at all is indexed after a month, that is a fault rather than patience.
Does submitting to Google help?
Submitting a sitemap in Search Console helps Google find your pages faster and gives you the report. Paid submission services sell nothing. Google finds sites by following links, and always has.
Why is a page I blocked in robots.txt still showing?
Because robots.txt controls crawling, not indexing. A blocked URL can be indexed from links on other sites, appearing with no description because Google was never allowed to read it. To remove a page: allow crawling, add noindex, wait for the recrawl, then block if you still want to.
Google indexed the wrong version of my page.
Look for "Duplicate, Google chose a different canonical" in the Pages report. It means your signals disagree: the canonical tag says one thing while internal links, the sitemap or redirects say another. Make all four agree and it resolves on the next crawl.
