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Lesson 7, Topic 37
In Progress

Submitting A Scan Request Or Rescanning

11.02.2022
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Request a crawl or recrawl

The simplest way to request a crawl for a single page is using the URL Inspection tool:

  1. Open the tool
  2. Enter the full URL of the page and click Enter
  3. Click Request indexing. The request will fail immediately if there is an access problem with the page. The request will fail silently if you have exceeded your quota of indexing requests.

To request a crawl for multiple pages, use a sitemap

About the URL Inspection tool

The URL Inspection tool provides information about Google’s indexed version of a specific page. Information includes AMP errors, structured data errors, and indexing issues.

Common tasks:

  • See the current index status of a URL: Retrieve information about Google’s indexed version of your page. See why Google could or couldn’t index your page.
  • Inspect a live URL: Test whether a page on your site is able to be indexed.
  • Request indexing for a URL: You can request that an URL be crawled (or recrawled) by Google.
  • View a rendered version of the page: See a screenshot of how Googlebot sees the page.
  • View loaded resources, JavaScript output, and other information: See a list of resources, page code, and more information by clicking View crawled page (indexed result) or View tested page (live test).
  • Troubleshoot a missing page: There can be many reasons why a page hasn’t been indexed. URL Inspection can help troubleshoot some of them.

See the current index status of a URL

See detailed Google Index information about a URL in your property.

To run the URL Inspection tool to see URL’s current index status:

  1. Open the URL Inspection tool.
  2. Enter the complete URL to inspect. A few notes:
  • The URL must be in the current property. URLs outside the current property cannot be tested. If you own that other property, you must switch properties to test the URL.
  • AMP vs non-AMP URLs: You can inspect both AMP and non-AMP URLs. The tool provides information about the corresponding AMP or non-AMP version of the page.
  • Alternate page versions: If the page has alternate/duplicate versions, the tool also provides information about the canonical version, if the canonical version is in a property that you own.
  1. Read how to understand the results.
  2. Optionally run an indexability test on the live URL
  3. Optionally request indexing for the URL.

There is a daily limit of inspection requests for each property that you own.

Understanding the results: Indexed URL

  1. Read the presence status at the top of the tool to see whether or not the URL is eligible to appear in Google Search results: URL is on Google means that the URL is eligible to appear in Search results, but is not guaranteed to be there. URL is not on Google means that the URL can’t appear in Search results.
  2. Expand the Coverage section to see more details:
  • Discovery: How Google found the URL.
  • Crawl: If Google was able to crawl the page, when it was crawled, or any obstacles that it encountered when crawling the URL. If the status is not URL is on Google, the reason why can generally be found here.
  • Indexing: The canonical URL that Google chose for this page.
  1. Enhancements: If you have structured data, if the page is an AMP or has an associated AMP, you will see details in the Enhancements section. This section also includes mobile usability testing.
  2. To see information about the request, including the HTTP request and response, and the returned HTML, click View crawled page. If this link is disabled, it is because there was a problem fetching the page; hover over the disabled button to see the reason.

Important notes:

  • This is not a live test. This tool describes the most recently indexed version of a page, not the live version on the web. The information shown in the tool is used by Google to evaluate Search results. Your page may have changed or become unavailable since Google last saw it. To test the current version of the page as Google would see it, select the Live Test button on the page.
  • “URL is on Google” doesn’t actually mean that your page is appearing in Search results. Actual appearance in Search results requires that the page and its structured data conform to quality and security guidelines. The URL Inspection tool doesn’t take into account manual actions, content removals, or temporarily blocked URLs. To see if your URL is appearing, search for your URL on Google; if your URL is missing but this tool says it was indexed, here’s how to find out why.
  • The “Last crawl” date in the Coverage section shows the date when the information shown here was retrieved (if the page was successfully crawled).

Request (re)indexing

You can request that an inspected URL be indexed by Google. Indexing can take up to a week or two; you can check the progress using this tool.

Some caveats when requesting indexing:

  • Indexing typically takes only a day or so, but can take much longer in some cases.
  • Submitting a request does not guarantee that the page will appear in the Google Index.
  • There is a daily limit to how many index requests you can submit. If you want many pages indexed, try submitting a sitemap to Google.

To request indexing for a URL:

  1. Inspect the page URL.
  2. Click Request indexing on the inspection result page for the URL. If the page passes a quick check to test for immediate indexing errors, it will be submitted to the indexing queue. You cannot request indexing if the page is considered to be non-indexable in the live test.

To request indexing of many new or updated pages, your best choice is to submit a sitemap, with the updated pages marked by <lastmod>.

Troubleshoot a missing page

If you think your page hasn’t been indexed, here’s how to verify and troubleshoot the issue.

  1. Check the index status of the page. Inspect the URL, either by entering the URL in the inspection URL textbox, or by clicking the inspect button shown next to a URL in one of the other Search Console reports (you might need to hover over a URL to see this button).
  2. The initial test results show you Google’s information about the URL in the Google index. These Google index results are used to generate search results. Note: This initial page is not a live test of the URL. Live testing is covered later.
    • If the URL status starts with “URL is on Google”, then the page should be available in Google Search. You can verify this by searching for the URL in Google. If the page isn’t in search results:
    • If the URL status is URL is not available to Google, then expand the Availability section.
  3. If you’ve changed the page since the crawl time listed, you can test your current version of the page by clicking Test live URL. If the status shown at the top of the page valid, then the page can probably be indexed (note that not all indexing issues can be detected by the live test).