• How can you check if the site is indexed?
  • Reason #1: the website is closed for indexing
  • Reason #2: the search robot does not know that the website or page exists
  • Reason #3: the website is banned
  • Reason #4: Technical errors
  • Reason #5: Poor pages quality

How Can You Check If the Website is Indexed?

Before falling into panic, we need to figure out for sure, what is wrong. So, the first thing you need to do is to find out if there is really a problem with the site’s indexing. Several methods can help you do this:

1.   Check the scan data in Google Search Console.

  • Open the “Coverage” tab in the “Index” section of the Google Search Console:

This is where you will find updates on page deletions and additions to the index, browse the history and see if a search robot comes to index the website. If the list of added pages has not been updated for a long time, it means that the “spider” has lost its way to your platform.


2.   Search operators.

You can enter the “site:” operator into the search box along with your website’s URL in Google, for example, it looks like this:

Site:{your website}

If, however, you use this operator when searching for pages, your website does not appear in search results, you should think about the reasons why your website is no longer indexed.

3.   Link box backlink index checker

This is the most reliable of methods because when the check is in progress, it refers to the Google output for each specific URL of your website.

Reason #1: the website is closed for indexing

This here, in the robots.txt file, is the most impenetrable invisibility cloak:

User-agent: *

Disallow: /

With such a cover, no search engine will find its way to your website. You should remove the Disallow: / directive.

The reasons why the website can still be hidden from search engine crawlers:

  • noindex tag malfunction: both relevant and irrelevant pages have been removed from indexation;
  • privacy settings in the CMS;
  • scanning is blocked in the .htaccess file.

Reason #2: the Search Robot Does Not Know That the Website or Page Exists

This is especially true for young platforms: if yours is new, then no wonder that the website is poorly indexed by Google. Especially when the registration of the website in the search takes too long and it is not even in the queue for scanning. Give the search engines at least two weeks to find it. Obtaining quality backlinks to your website would also be a nice strategy. This will not only speed up indexing but also increase the overall credibility of the website in the eyes of search engines.

The robot may not even know about your platform as it is rarely updated and has poorly linked internal pages. So don’t forget about interlinking when adding new pages.

Reason #3: The Website is Banned

Google may impose sanctions for various “search violations”. Such web resources get to bots’ blacklists and never get indexed again.

The problem is that website owners and webmasters don’t always see it that way. Determining the reasons for poor website indexing with Google sanctions without an SEO specialist will not be easy.

That usually leads to overlapping filters:

  • irrelevant and low-quality content;
  • intrusive and annoying advertising blocks;
  • selling links or link spam;
  • pages spammed with keywords;
  • boosting behavioral factors;
  • malware;

Reason #4: Technical Errors

Some of the technical parameters are so basic and critical at the same time that their removal would neutralize the poor indexing of the website at once. For instance:

  • invalid HTTP headers;
  • invalid redirects (using 302 instead of 301, rel=”canonical” with the same canonical page for each website page);
  • incorrect encoding, which the robot displays as a set of unreadable characters;
  • scanning errors indicated by the search engines themselves in their webmaster panels (Google Search Console for Google);
  • unstable hosting operation;
  • absent or incorrectly set sitemap.xml file.

Reason #5: Poor Pages Quality

In some cases, the low quality of content, for example, can be so blatant that Google will place a sanction on the website scanning – and that’s it, the website will no longer be indexed, because of the ban.

However, often the poor quality of pages, which causes Google to index the website poorly, only means that your competitors have a better website. That is, your website loses position in search results, in comparison with others.

The following reasons might be used by search engines for pessimization:

  • duplicate content (pages with the same content that is already in the search results; there is no point in adding it again);
  • the same header structure, the same meta tags;
  • a lot of 404 errors;
  • slow loading speed due to heavy pictures and non-optimized content.

The above reasons most often explain why a website is poorly indexed. If this list does not contain the factors that led to the pessimization of your online resource, it is best to contact an SEO specialist. Most likely, you will need to conduct a comprehensive website audit to identify the problem. One thing to remember: any promotion starts with the landing page indexing, without which you can’t get organic traffic.