Using URL Inspection Tool In Search Console Rightly

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. Open URL Inspection Tool

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 list, JavaScript output, and other information: See a list of resources, page code, and more information by clicking the more information link on the page verdict card.

• 8 Types Of Toxic Coworkers And How To Deal With Them
• Bad Things To Avoid Doing At Work [9 Things You Should Never Do At The Office]
• How To Be More Productive At Work [9 Easy To Learn Tips]

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:
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. Alternate page versions: If the page has alternate/duplicate versions, the report also provides information about the canonical version, if the canonical version is in a property that you own.
6. Read how to understand the results.
7. Optionally run an indexability test on the live URL
8. 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

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).

1. Read the presence status at the top of the report to see whether or not the URL can appear in Google Search Results: URL is on Google means that the URL has the ability to appear in search results, but is not guaranteed to be there. URL is not on Google means that the URL won't appear in search results.
2. Expand the Coverage section to see more details:
3. Discovery: How Google found the URL.
4. 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.
5. Indexing: The canonical URL for this page chosen by Google and indicated by the page.
6. 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.
7. 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.

The inspection results include the following expandable sections:Presence on Google (page verdict card)

This card describes whether or not the URL can appear in Google Search results. The following values are possible:

URL is on Google

• What it means: The URL has been indexed, can appear in Google Search results, and no problems were found with any enhancements found in the page (structured data, linked AMP pages, and so on). "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.
• What to do next: Typically nothing, although you can explore what Google knows about your page by navigating into the details of the index coverage or enhancement sections.

If a URL is temporarily blocked using the Remove URLs tool, the URL Inspection tool will report the URL as "URL is on Google," with Index coverage status "Crawled". This does not mean that your URL is appearing in Search results. To see if your URL is still blocked, visit the Remove URLs tool or search for your URL on Google.

URL is on Google, but has issues

• What it means: The URL has been indexed and can appear in Google Search results, but there are some problems that might prevent it from appearing with the enhancements that you applied to the page. This might mean a problem with an associated AMP page, or malformed structured data for a rich result (such as a recipe or job posting) on the page.
• What to do next: Read the warnings or errors information in the report and try to fix the problems described.

URL is not on Google: Indexing errors

• What it means: There was at least one critical error that prevented the URL from being indexed, and it cannot appear in Google Search until those issues are fixed.
• What to do next: Expand the Index coverage section to see details about the indexing attempt. See the list of index coverage errors and possible fix steps.

URL is not on Google

• What it means: This URL won't appear in Google Search results, but we think that was your intention. Common reasons include that the page is password-protected or robots.txt protected, or blocked by a noindex directive.
• What to do next: Read the details in the Index coverage section to learn more about the reason. A few possible reasons:
• If the "User-declared canonical" and "Google-selected canonical" values are different, this means that this URL is one of a set of similar pages, and Google has chosen to index another version of the same page. There's probably no need to do anything here, though you might consider removing your explicit canonical tag, or considering why you need another page as canonical.
• If there is a noindex or robots.txt blockage that you didn't expect (see the Index coverage details section below), you must remove that blockage to allow Google to access your site.
• For other index coverage reasons, read the list of values and possible fix instructions.

URL is unknown to Google: If the index coverage status "URL is unknown to Google" appears, it means that Google hasn't indexed the URL either because it hasn't seen the URL before, or because it has found it as a properly marked alternate page, but it can't be crawled. To fix, run a live inspection, fix any issues you might see, and submit the page for indexing. (Hint: if this is a properly marked but uncrawlable alternate page, if you inspect the canonical page you will see this page listed, with a crawl error.

URL is an alternate version

• What it means: This URL is one of a set of alternate versions of the same page. This might mean that the URL you submitted is the desktop URL for a site that is mobile-first, or that you have submitted the URL of an AMP page that has a canonical non-AMP version. The Crawled as the value in the report shows which crawler type (mobile or desktop) considers this to be an alternate version. You can see the indexed URL as the Google-selected canonical value under Index coverage.
• What to do: Generally there is nothing to do, though you might check the Google-selected canonical to make sure it is an expected page.

Coverage

This section describes the index status of the URL and the details of the indexing process for this URL. The following information can be provided, depending on the index coverage status:

Discovery

Index coverage statusA more detailed description of the Presence on Google label, explaining why the URL is or isn't on Google. This is a success, warning, failure, or excluded value. See the list of values and possible fix instructions. See URL is unknown to Google.

Sitemaps: Any known sitemaps that point to this URL. Note: This includes only sitemaps submitted using the Sitemaps report or listed in the robots.txt for this site. Sitemaps discovered through other means won't be listed. For larger or new sites, it is a good practice to provide a sitemap to help Google know which pages to crawl. See known issues.

Referring page: A page that Google possibly used to discover this URL. The referring page might directly link to this URL, or it might be a grandparent or great-grandparent of a page that links to this URL. If this value is absent it doesn't mean that no referring page exists, just that this information might not be available to the URL Inspection tool at this time. If you see "URL might be known from other sources that are currently not reported", it means that Google found this URL through some means other than a sitemap or referring page, but the referring information currently isn't available to this tool.

Last crawl: The last time this page was crawled by Google, in your local time. All information shown in this tool is derived from this last crawled version.

Crawl allowed?: Indicates whether your site allowed Google to crawl (visit) the page or blocked it with a robots.txt rule. If you did not intend to block Google, you should remove the robots.txt block. Note that this is not the same as allowing indexing, which is given by the "Indexing allowed?" value.

Page fetch: Whether or not Google could actually get the page from your server. If crawling is not allowed, this field will always show a failure. If crawling is allowed, page fetch might still fail for various reasons. See explanations of fetch failures. "Crawl allowed?" indicates whether you want the page to be reachable; "Page fetch" indicates whether, if allowed, Google could actually reach the page.

Indexing allowed?: Whether or not your page explicitly disallowed indexing. If indexing is disallowed, the reason is explained, and the page won't appear in Google Search results. 

IMPORTANT:  If your page is blocked by robots.txt (see "Crawl allowed"), then "Indexing allowed" will always be "Yes" because Google can't see and respect the noindex directive. In that case, your page might appear in Search results.

User-declared canonical: Your declared canonical URL, if the page explicitly declares one. You can declare a canonical URL in several ways: a <link rel="canonical"> tag, an HTTP header, a sitemap, or a few other methods. If your page is one of a set of similar or duplicate pages, we recommend explicitly declaring the canonical URL. There is no guarantee that Google will choose this URL, but we will take this into consideration. For AMP pages, this should be the non-AMP version (unless it is a self-canonical AMP).

Google-selected canonical: The page that Google selected as the canonical (authoritative) URL, when it found similar or duplicate pages on your site. Google might select the user-declared canonical, but sometimes Google might choose another URL that it considers a better canonical example. If the page has no alternate versions, the Google-selected canonical is the inspected URL. If you find an unexpected page here, consider explicitly declaring a canonical version.

The canonical URL is not always the one shown in Search results: for example, if a page has both a desktop canonical and a mobile version, Google will probably show the URL appropriate for your current device. Note that this value can be a few hours behind the value in our index. If the page is not the canonical URL, you can inspect the Google-selected canonical URL by selecting Inspect (but only if the URL is in a property that you manage).

Enhancements (AMP, Jobs, and more)

This section describes any Search enhancements detected by Google on your URL the last time it was indexed. If the URL could not be indexed, or no enhancements were detected, this section will be empty.

This tool does not yet show all possible enhancements. Here are the enhancements supported by this tool:

Mobile Usability

Discover whether your page is easy to use on a mobile device. Not all pages are tested for mobile usability.

The following verdicts are possible:

• The page is not mobile-friendly: The page won't work well on a mobile device because of a few issues. See descriptions of the possible errors.
• The page is mobile-friendly: The page should probably work well on a mobile device. More details.
• No data available: For some reason, we couldn't retrieve the page or test its mobile-friendliness. Please wait a bit and try again.

Click the verdict row to get more details about mobile usability for this URL.

AMP

If the page has a linked AMP version, you can see information about it by selecting the row in the report. Use this information to help find and troubleshoot AMP-specific indexing and other issues. Details are shown here apply to the AMP version referenced by the current page; they do not apply to the current page. In addition to standard AMP errors, you might see these Google-specific AMP errors.

To see other pages on your site affected by a specific issue, select the issue description row, then select Open Report. An URL page inspected with the URL Inspection tool as an AMP can have the following possible statuses:

• AMP page is valid / Web Story is valid: The AMP is valid and indexed.
• AMP page is invalid / Web Story is invalid: The AMP has an error that will prevent it from being indexed.
• AMP page isn't indexed / Web Story isn't indexed (indexed version) or AMP page cannot be indexed / Web Story cannot be indexed (live inspection): The page is blocked from indexing, typically because of a robots.txt rule or a noindex directive.
• AMP page is valid with warnings / Web Story is valid with warnings: AMP can be indexed, but there are some issues that might prevent it from getting full features, or it uses tags or attributes that are deprecated, and might become invalid in the future.
• Not an AMP page: The page inspected was not an AMP page.

Various rich result types

You can see information about any rich result types (structured data) found on the page. Information includes the number of valid items found on the URL, descriptions of each item, and details about any warnings or errors found. The following rich result types are supported:

• Breadcrumb
• Dataset
• Event
• FAQ
• Fact check
• Guided recipe
• How-to
• Image License
• Job posting
• Logo
• Product
• Q&A page
• Recipe
• Review snippet
• Sitelinks searchbox
• Special Announcement
• Video

My rich result isn't here! Not all rich result types are supported by the tool yet. Unsupported types might be present and valid on the page and can appear in search results, but won't appear in the tool.

Inspect a live URL

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 to index, 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 the View crawled page.

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

Understanding the results: Live test

Important notes:

• This is a live test. This tool fetches and examines the URL in real-time. The information shown in the live test can differ from the indexed URL for the reasons described below.
• The live test does not check for the presence of the URL in any sitemaps or any referring pages.
• The Indexable status in the live URL can be different from the Index coverage status on the indexed URL for these reasons:
• You have changed or fixed something in the live URL, such as removing (or adding) a noindex tag or a robots.txt block, and the changes were not yet indexed. Examine the difference in the Indexed and Live tests, or check the page version history on your site to discover the differences between the indexed version and the live version.
• The live test does not support all the index states in the indexed version report. Some states in the indexed report aren't tested or don't make sense in a live test, and will be reported differently in the live test. See the indexable section details to learn the unsupported states.

Does a valid result mean that my page will be indexed?

No. This test only confirms that Googlebot can access your page for indexing. Even if you get a valid or warning verdict in the live test, your page must still fulfill other conditions in order to be indexed. For instance:

• The page cannot be subject to any manual actions or legal issues.
• The page cannot be a duplicate of another indexed page; it must either be unique or selected as the canonical version of a set of similar pages.
• The page quality must be high enough to warrant indexing.

The inspection results include the following expandable sections:Potentially available on Google?The top card gives a general evaluation of whether or not the live URL can be indexed. A positive result is not a guarantee that it will appear in Search results. 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.

The following values are possible:

URL is available to Google

• What it means: The URL isn't blocked and doesn't have any detectable errors to prevent full indexing. If Google indexes the URL it can appear in Google Search results, provided that it conforms to quality and security guidelines, and is not subject to manual actions, content removals, or temporarily blocked URLs.
• What to do next: If the page is different from the indexed version, you can request indexing by selecting the button on the page. Alternatively you could submit a sitemap, or wait for it to be crawled naturally.

URL is available to Google, but has issues

• What it means: The URL can be indexed by Google, but there are some problems that might prevent it from appearing with the enhancements that you tried to implement. This might mean a problem with an associated AMP page, or malformed structured data for a rich result (such as a recipe or job posting) on the page.
• What to do next: Read the warnings or errors information in the report and try to fix the problems described.

URL is not available to Google

• What it means: This URL can't appear in Google Search results due to a critical issue.
• What to do next: Read the details in the Availability section to learn more about the reason.

URL is an alternate version

• What it means: The URL is not considered the canonical version of this page, so it is not indexed, but this is not an error. What to do next: Probably nothing. Google has a canonical URL for this page that should be indexed. The current index information will show the canonical URL in Coverage > Google-selected canonical.

Availability

This section of the report describes whether the page can be indexed by Google. However, a positive result is no guarantee that it will appear in Search results. Appearance in Search results additionally 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.

For an explanation of the various properties, see the property descriptions in the indexed version.

Differences between indexed test and live test results

Not all availability values shown in the indexed report are possible in the live report. Here is a list of unsupported states with explanations.

Indexed report status	Why not shown in live test
Submitted URL ....	Any status that starts with "Submitted URL" cannot be shown in a live test, as these states are only shown when the user submitted the page using a sitemap, and sitemap information is not available in a live test.
Submitted and indexedIndexed, not submitted in sitemap	The equivalent status "URL can be indexed" is shown.
Indexed, though blocked by robots.txt	The phrase "Indexed" is not applicable in a live test. If blocked, the corresponding error "Blocked by robots.txt" will be shown.
Discovered, currently not indexed	Not applicable to a live test.
Crawled, not indexed	Not applicable to a live test.
"Duplicate page" statuses:Alternate page with proper canonical tagURL indexed as an alt versionDuplicate page without canonical tagGoogle chose different canonical than userSubmitted URL not selected as canonical	Google's canonical information is not available in a live test, nor is any knowledge of duplicate pages. If the user declares a canonical page, that information is available.

Enhancements (Mobile usability, AMP, Jobs, and more)

This is similar to the enhancements section in the indexed version of the URL.

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.

Screenshots are available only for the live URL test; screenshots are not available for the indexed URL. 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 the 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. Navigate to 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>.

Known Issues

• In a few cases, we don't report the sitemap for a page that was submitted in a sitemap. We are working to fix this.