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November 18, 2014How to Check How Many of Your Pages are Indexed in Google & Why Google Isn’t Indexing Your Site
Indexed pages are those that are scoured by Google search engines for possible new content or for information it already knows about. Having a web page indexed is a critical part of a website’s Internet search engine ranking and web page content value.
How Do I Use a Google Indexed Pages Checker?
A Google indexed pages checker can be used in the following way:
- Enter your URL in the Google indexed pages checker.
- The URL is the website that you are wishing to check about its ranking or webpage content value.
- Click continue to receive the results of your scan.
The Quick-and-Dirty Method for Finding Indexed Pages in Google
For the quick and dirty method, simply perform a simple site search in your Google search bar with “site:https://www.yourdomain.com/” The following is a result for an SEO.co site search:
What Are Indexed Website Pages?
Indexed pages are generated by Google search engines. Google is scouring the Internet for new content and new websites. Any new pages or significant amounts of information added to a webpage are noted by Google. Each page for a website is indexed by a web crawler for content value and for future search requests by consumers. A future Internet customer may search by using certain key words and the key words may find a webpage with certain content or image content. Google search engines and web crawlers know about each new bit of information printed or posted on a webpage as it is being posted.
Why Are Website Pages Indexed?
Each new Internet website page is indexed by certain categories and other marking tools. Pages are indexed because the content and websites themselves need to be listed among the many other websites that may be similar. A page must first be indexed. Google’s bots crawl over a website and create a cached copy of each page. The indexes already completed are added to and a new hierarchy of valued website pages may be created, for example.
How Are Website Pages Valuated?
Each website page is valuated according to several Internet markers and these markers are the following:
- The content of a webpage is important. The information or images on a page need to have good content that is in demand by a public audience.
- Supply and demand are critical for any new page.
- Good content for a page is linkable.
- The title tags for a website page are important.
- Search engine optimization frequently uses a title tag and the category hierarchy of a URL.
- Good content for a page can include images and image alternative text.
- A bots crawler will sift through this website page information to find the good content that is in demand by a current Internet public audience.
How Are My Website Pages Included in a Google Order Ranking?
A website needs to be found by an Internet audience for any sales to be completed. A website that is created but not marketed in any way will just sit alone. A public purchasing audience can not find a website that is alone or unknown. A Google order ranking is critical for a website in order for the online business to be discovered by the buying public. Google search engines are used more frequently by a buying public to find certain products to buy on the Internet.
How Do I Know How Many Pages Google Currently Has Indexed for My Business?
Google indexed pages checker can tell you which pages are currently being indexed by their bots crawlers. Your website needs to be indexed for the following reasons:
- Google needs to find your website and create a cached or marked copy of each page of your website.
- Your website pages need to be cached or indexed in order for them to be included in Google’s search results.
- Buying customers use Google search engines frequently before buying.
What Does the Google Indexed Pages Checker Tell Me?
The Google indexed pages checker tells you exactly how many pages Google currently has indexed for your website. A full domain or sub domain can be researched in this manner. You can see how many pages have been included in Google search. Google may report the following information about your website:
- Google may indicate that only the first page is indexed for your website.
- Google may indicate that only a few of the pages for a website are being indexed.
- All of the information for a website needs to be properly crawled and listed with Google.
- Information for a website page could be overlooked by a bots crawler and the page could be unlisted.
How Do I Correct a Problem If My Website Pages Are Not Being Listed?
A website with some pages that are not being listed with Google is limiting the amount of profit that a website could bring in. A buying public audience does not know about the content of the pages that are not being listed. There are several ways to correct this website problem and these methods include the following:
- The content of the website page that is being overlooked needs to be addressed.
- A Google bots crawler is not recognizing the content of a webpage with poor content.
- The content of the pages overlooked needs to be upgraded with good content.
- Upgrading a website page could mean rewriting the pages that are unknown or adding more recognizable content.
- Recognizable content for a page includes better and more relevant content about products that are in demand.
- A page’s title tags could be upgraded to include those markers that reach a more popular audience.
- Images and image alternative text is added in order to attract a bots crawler for that particular page.
- Off page marketing including blog posts are used for referencing certain website pages.
How Do I Bring More Traffic and Converted Sales to My Internet Business?
This question is central to any online business. One method of bringing in a buying audience to a website is to make sure that the pages of the website are recognized with good and linkable content. The content for the pages needs to be in demand and recognized by Google’s bots crawlers. This enhancement will allow the online business to be ranked high on the first page of a Google search result. A visitor to the Internet who is ready to buy within a certain niche market is the visitor who can find your website business and buy immediately. More traffic with better visitors is the goal of an Internet marketing strategy.
Why Google Isn’t Indexing Your Site
It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it feels devastating. If you’re going to get any organic traffic from online searches, you need to make sure your site is visible—in other words, if you want to show up on Google’s search results pages, Google has to know that your site exists. And if your site isn’t being indexed by Google, it might as well not exist.
If your website isn’t appearing through organic search at all, fight the temptation to start panicking. Most of the time, this is simply an indication of some error or blockage that’s preventing Google from indexing your site—and these problems are easily fixed.
Take a look at these 10 reasons why Google might not be indexing your site—if you can’t be found in Google, chances are one of these is the culprit.
1. You don’t have both a www and non-www domain.
To the average web visitor, there’s no real difference between a URL that starts with https:// or https://www. Both of them ultimately lead you to the same place, so most users and webmasters don’t give it a second thought. But the www variant is actually a subdomain of the broader non-www version. In order to get your website indexed properly, you’ll need to verify your ownership of both in Google Webmaster Tools. You can also set your preferred domain, to inform Google which version you’d like to primarily use.
2. Google is still looking for your site.
If you’ve just launched a site and you excitedly scoured through Google to see your site listed, relax. It usually takes Google at least a few days to index a new site. If several days have already passed and you still haven’t seen any results, it could mean that Google is having trouble indexing your site—and that usually means you’re having an issue with a sitemap. If you haven’t yet created or uploaded a properly formatted sitemap, that could be your problem. Once corrected, you can “force” Google to crawl your website through Webmaster Tools.
3. You’ve got a lingering robots file.
Robots.txt files are shockingly common to find. Occasionally, developers or content managers will use a robots.txt file to prevent a search engine from indexing a given page. Essentially, the file communicates with Google crawlers and tells them not to index a site—so if you remove the file, you’ll cease to have an indexing problem. Do a thorough scan of your website code, and remove any instances of robots.txt files that aren’t there for a specific reason. You’ll still need to give Google a few days to index your site after correcting the erroneous file.
4. Google is experiencing crawling errors.
It doesn’t happen often, but there is a chance that Google is having trouble crawling some of your web pages. If your home page is indexing, but not all of your internal pages are, it could be a symptom of a simple crawling error. Log into Google Webmaster Tools and click on “Crawl,” then “Crawl Errors.” This will lead you to a list of any pages on your site that are currently experiencing crawling errors. These errors are sometimes attributable to robots.txt files, detailed above, but can also be the result of DNS errors or server errors, both of which are easily correctable in most circumstances.
5. Duplicate content is interfering with crawlers.
If you’re following best practices for content marketing, this shouldn’t be an issue, but there are circumstances where duplicate content can exist on your site—such as variations of a “master page” designed for slightly different audiences. If Google detects multiple instances of duplicate content, search engine crawlers can become confused and abandon indexing your site altogether. The easiest way to correct this is to get rid of the duplicate content. If deleting the duplicate content altogether isn’t an option, you can use 301 redirects or selective robots.txt files to ensure that Google only crawls one instance of each page.
6. Your site is experiencing loading problems.
If Google’s going to index your site, your site needs to be up. That means if you’re experiencing a loading problem when Google is attempting to index your site, you might miss the opportunity to be indexed. Ridiculously long loading times are sometimes the issue; if this is the case, you can decrease your loading times by setting up a decent caching system, reducing the size of your images, and installing a few applications to make the site run faster. It’s also possible that your hosting is unreliable, resulting in intermittent downtimes that are interrupting Google’s indexing attempts.
7. You’re using poorly optimized languages.
Google has some strong preferences when it comes to the type of code on your site. HTML is one of the most easily indexed languages available, but not all options are so lucky. JavaScript and AJAX, for example, are supported by Google, but they are not as easily indexed as HTML. If your site is built in AJAX or JavaScript and your structure isn’t just right, Google could have trouble indexing your pages.
8. You’re being blocked by htaccess or privacy settings.
If you run a WordPress site, it’s possible you accidentally have privacy settings on—you can toggle this off by checking out “Privacy” under the Settings tab. It’s also possible that you’re using a .htaccess file for your website on the server. While .htaccess files are useful in most cases, they can sometimes interfere with site indexing.
9. You’ve got a Noindex or Nofollow indication somewhere in the meta tag.
Just like the robots.txt file, this is an addition that can mask your site’s pages from being found by search engine crawlers. Check your site’s code and look for the “noindex” tag somewhere in a meta title. If you find that somewhere, you’ve instantly diagnosed your indexing problem. Simply remove the tag and replace it if necessary, and you should be back on the fast track to search engine indexation.
10. You’ve been hit with a massive penalty.
When Google penalizes sites, it usually does so by dropping ranks and thus, visibility and traffic. However, there are rare and extreme cases when Google penalizes a site by completely removing it from indexes entirely. This is a type of manual penalty reserved for major infractions, so you don’t have to worry about this unless you’ve done something very wrong in the eyes of Google. If you’ve gotten deindexed this way, you’ve probably already been notified by Google, so unless that’s the case, you don’t have to worry that you’re not being indexed as a punishment.
Once your site is indexable, give Google a few days to catch up. You should start seeing your site in search engine results shortly. If you’re still having trouble, it’s possible your indexing problem could be more complex than usual. If you’re appearing, but you’re ranking very low, it could be an indication that your site is still new and doesn’t have much authority, or it could be an indication of a penalty. Either way, staying committed to best practices over an extended period of time is the best way to increase your visibility.
Summary
Checking the pages of your website that are indexed by Google is a good step towards ensuring that an online business is not alone and overlooked. A business online needs to be recognized by the important search engines and ranked high on the first page of a search engine result. Most visitors who are wanting to purchase a product online right away will look at the highest ranking business on a search engine result and then the next few businesses before buying what they need.
Sam Edwards
He is a recurring speaker at the Search Marketing Expo conference series and a TEDx Talker. Today he works directly with high-end clients across all verticals to maximize on and off-site SEO ROI through content marketing and link building.
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