In Google Search Console (GSC), within the coverage report, accessible on the left column under "coverage", we can take stock of a website’s indexing status. It’s an information goldmine about a website’s good crawlability and indexing.
If you do not have a GSC account yet, you will first need to create it and validate your property.
The coverage report is as follows:
The report contains 4 sections: Error, Valid with warnings, Valid and Excluded.
We recommend that you start with the "Valid" section in green.
This section lists the indexed and valid URLs. In other words, URLs with no error, nor any form of anomaly with Google.
The number of valid URLs
First, check the URLs’ total number displayed at the top, under "Valid" (here 2.3K). Does it correspond to the number of pages to index on your website? If not, keep this in mind as these missing URLs are most likely in one or more of the other 3 sections that we analyze in the next 3 articles.
With the graph, we can also see the indexing’ progress: does it seem consistent to you? Or on the contrary, lower / higher than your website’s true number of content pages? Same as before, keep that in mind for the future.
Present in the sitemap or not?
Further down, in the "Details" subsection, we can see 2 lines: "Sent and indexed", and "Indexed, but not sent via a sitemap"
If you've sent a sitemap that is up to date, and contains all of your indexable content, all of your valid URLs should be in the "Submitted and Indexed" section.
=> But there are sometimes inconsistencies to identify and correct.
To do so, we will take a closer look at the concerned URLs’ list by clicking on the corresponding line.
List of sent and indexed URLs
If the list contains URLs that should not be indexed: consult the declared sitemap(s) to identify any errors, then deindex these unwanted pages.
List of indexed URLs, but not sent via a sitemap
You have URLs in this subsection because:
The sitemap is not up to date, or it does not contain all your URLs, but only the main ones: don't panic, you just have to update your sitemap(s). This is, for example, the case with the screenshot above.
You don't have a sitemap because the website’s size does not justify its creation.
If after these checks, the valid pages’ total number seems too low compared to what it should be, consult the following articles to complete the coverage’ analysis:
Check out similar articles:
Have you found your answer?