1. Crawled vs. indexed: the key difference
These two words get used interchangeably, but they're different steps. Crawling is Google's bot fetching your page. Indexing is Google deciding the page is worth storing and analysing so it can appear in results. A page can be crawled but not indexed — Google looked, and chose not to include it, often because the content is thin, duplicate, or low value. Knowing which stage failed tells you what to fix.
2. The reliable check: Search Console
The authoritative answer comes from Google itself. In Google Search Console's URL Inspection tool, paste any URL from your site. It tells you plainly whether the page is “on Google,” when it was last crawled, and if there's a problem keeping it out. The Pages report (formerly Coverage) shows the same at scale: how many pages are indexed and the reasons given for the ones that aren't.
3. The quick check: the site: operator
For a fast, no-login spot check, search Google for site:yourdomain.com/your-page-url. If the page appears, it's indexed; if nothing shows, it probably isn't. This is handy but rough — it's not as precise or complete as Search Console, so treat it as a quick signal rather than the final word.
4. Checking many URLs at once
Inspecting URLs one at a time is fine for a handful, but painful for a whole site or a new batch of pages. To check many at once, paste your list into a bulk index checker and see, in one pass, which URLs are indexed and which aren't — so you can focus attention on the gaps instead of testing them individually.
Check up to 50 URLs with the Bulk Index Checker
Paste a list of URLs and see their Google indexing status all at once — the fast way to spot pages that never made it in. Free, no signup.
5. Why a page isn't indexed — and how to fix it
If a page is missing, work through the usual causes in order:
- A stray
noindextag. The most common culprit — anoindexleft over from staging tells Google to keep the page out. See Google's note on blocking indexing with noindex and remove it if it shouldn't be there. - Blocked by robots.txt. If crawling is disallowed, Google may never see the content. Check your robots.txt rules.
- Not in your sitemap / no internal links. Google finds pages through links and sitemaps. An orphan page with no links pointing to it may simply never be discovered.
- Thin or duplicate content. If Google crawled it but didn't index it, the page often isn't seen as adding enough value. Strengthen the content — this is the most common fix for “crawled, not indexed.”
- It's brand new. Indexing can take days to weeks. Submit the sitemap and request indexing, then be patient.
Fix the cause, request indexing again, and re-check in a few days. For a fuller picture of what might be holding a page back, run it through the SEO Audit Tool.
