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.
3. Read how to understand the results.
4. Optionally run an indexability test on the live URL
5. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.

Live URL test

You can test a live URL in your property to see whether it is capable of being indexed by Google. This will run a test against the live page for information similar to the indexed URL. It is useful when you want to test changes in the page against the currently indexed version of the page.

To test a live URL for potential indexing errors:

1. Inspect the indexed URL. Note: it’s fine if the page hasn’t been indexed yet, or has failed indexing, but it must be accessible from the internet without any login information.
2. Click Test live URL on the index results page.
3. Read understanding the live test results to understand what you’re looking at.
4. You can toggle between the live test results and the indexed results by selecting Google Index or Live Test on the page.
5. To rerun a live test, select the (reload) button on the page.
6. To see details about the page, including a screenshot and HTTP response headers, select View crawled page.

There is a per-property daily limit of live inspections.

View the rendered page

You can view a screenshot of the rendered page as Googlebot sees it. This is useful for confirming that all elements of the page are present and appear as you intend. Differences might be the result of resources that are blocked to Googlebot.

A screenshot is available only for the live URL test with a successful test result. Screenshots are not available for the indexed URL, or for non-successful fetches of the live test. The page must be reachable to generate a screenshot. If your page is behind a firewall, you can expose it to the URL Inspection tool using a tunnel.

To view the rendered page:

1. Inspect the homepage of your site.
2. Click Test live URL on the index results page.
3. Click View tested page on the page verdict card to open additional information panels. If this option is not available it is typically because the page cannot be reached for the live test.
4. Click the Screenshot tab.

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:

• Check the Manual Actions report and Security Issues report for issues affecting that page. Issues on either report can prevent your page from appearing in search results.
• Check to see if someone has temporarily blocked the page.
• If none of the previous issues affect the page, continue debugging the issue as described here.
• If the URL status is URL is not available to Google, then expand the Availability section.
  • The Availability section header should include a label describing in brief why the URL could not be indexed. See the list of values and possible fix instructions. If the label is URL is unknown to Google, it means that Google hasn’t seen that URL before, so you should request that the page be indexed. Indexing typically takes a few days.
  • If Crawl allowed? is “No,” that means Google can’t crawl the page because of a robots.txt rule, which prevents Google from crawling the page. Read how to test and fix this issue.
  • If Indexing allowed? is “No”, that means your site is returning a “noindex” tag or header that prevents Google from indexing the page, which enables it to appear in Google Search results. You’ll have to remove this tag or header from the page before Google will index it.

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).