GUIDE
A page is missing from Google: an indexing checklist
Start with the exact URL and its reported state in Search Console. Then check access, indexing directives, page content and discovery in that order. Keep a record of what you find and the changes you make.
Separate discovery, crawling and indexing
A page can be unknown to Google, discovered but not yet crawled, or crawled without being indexed. The investigation differs for each situation. Search Console’s URL Inspection helps establish the reported state and the selected canonical.
Compare the inspected URL with the address visitors use. Protocol, hostname, parameters and trailing slashes can create different URLs. Inspect the final address after any redirects.
Check the response and access
Open the URL without an administrator session and inspect its HTTP response. A published page intended for search should serve the expected content. Investigate redirects, server errors, password protection and firewall challenges.
A page that works for a logged-in administrator may behave differently for a visitor or crawler. Test the public version and, when needed, review server or security logs with the site administrator.
Review robots and noindex directives
Robots.txt controls crawling. A noindex directive controls whether an accessible page may be included in search. Google needs to access a page to read its noindex directive. Check both the HTML robots meta tag and the X-Robots-Tag response header.
In WordPress, review the reading settings and page-specific SEO settings. Also check whether a staging configuration was carried into production. Make changes only after confirming which pages should be public.
Check canonical URLs and content overlap
Inspect the canonical declared on the page and compare it with the canonical reported by Google. A canonical is a signal about the preferred representative of duplicate or similar content.
Review redirects, internal links and sitemap entries for consistency. For a translated page, check its own URL and the relationship with its language counterpart. Investigate why a different page is being selected before changing several signals at once.
Make important content available
Check that the page presents its main content, title and useful explanation to visitors and in rendered inspection. Review pages that are very similar, empty, dependent on an error-prone script or incomplete after a template change.
Ask whether the page has a distinct purpose and enough information to serve that purpose. Updating the content may be more appropriate than adding another URL that answers the same question.
Review links and the sitemap
Link to important pages from relevant public pages using ordinary links with an href. Check that the XML sitemap contains the intended, published URLs and that its URLs are consistent with canonicals and internal links.
A sitemap helps discovery. Review its actual output after plugin or language changes, including the language homepages. Fix the source of an incorrect URL so it stays correct after the sitemap regenerates.
Verify the correction and request a review
Re-test the page after a change. Record the response, directives, canonical, important content and links. For a small number of corrected pages, URL Inspection can be used to request indexing; for larger changes, keep the sitemap current.
Review progress in Search Console and keep the inspection dates. If the issue persists, collect the exact URL, reported reason, recent changes and access findings for a technical SEO review.
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