How to Check If Google Indexed Your Site (And What to Do If It Didn't)

You've built your website. You've published your content. You've waited. But when you search for your business on Google — nothing. No listing, no snippet, no trace of your site anywhere in the results. The question that follows is always the same: has Google even indexed my site?

Indexing is the first gate your website needs to pass through before it can rank for anything. If Google hasn't indexed your pages, they simply don't exist in search results. It doesn't matter how good your content is, how beautiful your design is, or how competitive your prices are. Without indexing, you're invisible.

This guide walks you through exactly how to check if Google has indexed your site, how to diagnose problems if it hasn't, and what concrete steps to take to get your pages into Google's index.

What Does "Indexed" Actually Mean?

Before checking anything, it helps to understand what indexing is — and what it isn't.

Google works in three stages: crawling, indexing, and ranking. Crawling is when Googlebot discovers your pages by following links. Indexing is when Google processes and stores the content of those pages in its database. Ranking is when Google decides where to show those stored pages in search results for relevant queries.

A page can be crawled but not indexed. This happens when Google visits your page but decides not to add it to its database — perhaps because the content is thin, duplicated, or blocked by a noindex tag. Understanding this distinction is important because the fix for "not crawled" is different from the fix for "crawled but not indexed."

If you're unfamiliar with how these technical SEO issues interconnect, it's worth learning the basics. A single misconfigured setting can prevent your entire site from appearing in search results.

Method 1: The site: Operator in Google Search

The fastest way to check if Google has indexed your site is the site: search operator. No tools required — just a browser.

You can also check individual pages by being more specific: site:yourdomain.com/specific-page/. This tells you whether that particular URL is in Google's index.

Limitations: The site: operator gives approximate results. The count isn't always accurate, and it won't tell you why pages are missing. For detailed diagnostics, you need Google Search Console.

Method 2: Google Search Console (The Definitive Answer)

Google Search Console (GSC) is the authoritative source for indexing information. It's free, it's directly from Google, and it gives you page-by-page indexing status with reasons for any exclusions.

Search Console also shows you the specific reasons Google excluded pages. Common statuses include "Discovered – currently not indexed," "Crawled – currently not indexed," "Excluded by noindex tag," and "Blocked by robots.txt." Each of these requires a different fix.

Method 3: Search for Your Exact Page Title

A quick informal check: search Google for your exact page title in quotes. For example, "Your Exact Page Title Here". If your page is indexed and the title is unique, it should appear in the results. If it doesn't show up, the page likely isn't indexed — or Google chose a different title for it.

This method is fast but not definitive. It's best used as a supplement to the methods above, not a replacement.

Method 4: Third-Party SEO Tools

Tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Screaming Frog can also show you which of your pages are indexed. They do this by cross-referencing their own crawl data with Google's search results. These tools are useful when you manage large sites with hundreds or thousands of pages, but they're overkill for a quick indexing check and they come with subscription costs.

For a thorough understanding of what these tools can reveal, a full SEO audit covers indexing alongside dozens of other critical factors.

My Site Isn't Indexed — What's Wrong?

If you've confirmed that Google hasn't indexed your site (or key pages), here are the most common causes and their fixes.

1. Your Site Is Brand New

Google doesn't index sites instantly. A brand-new website with no inbound links can take days to weeks to get noticed. Google needs to discover your site first, either by following a link from another indexed page or by you submitting it directly through Search Console.

Fix: Submit your sitemap in Google Search Console. Request indexing for your homepage and key pages. Get at least one or two links from other websites to signal to Google that your site exists and is worth crawling.

2. A noindex Tag Is Blocking Your Pages

The <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> tag explicitly tells Google not to index a page. This is sometimes added intentionally (for staging sites or thank-you pages) but is often left on by accident — especially after migrating from a development environment.

Fix: View your page source (right-click → View Page Source) and search for "noindex." If you find it on a page that should be indexed, remove the tag. Also check for X-Robots-Tag: noindex in your HTTP headers, which does the same thing but is invisible in the page source.

3. Your robots.txt File Is Blocking Googlebot

The robots.txt file sits at your domain root (e.g., yourdomain.com/robots.txt) and tells search engine crawlers which parts of your site they're allowed to access. A Disallow: / directive blocks everything.

Fix: Visit your robots.txt file in a browser and review the directives. Make sure you're not accidentally blocking important directories. You can also test your robots.txt using the robots.txt Tester in Google Search Console.

4. No XML Sitemap (or a Broken One)

An XML sitemap is a file that lists all the pages you want Google to index. While Google can discover pages by crawling links, a sitemap helps ensure nothing important gets missed — especially on sites with complex navigation or orphan pages.

Fix: Generate an XML sitemap (most CMS platforms have plugins for this — Yoast SEO for WordPress, for example) and submit it in Google Search Console under Sitemaps. Verify that it returns a 200 status code and lists all your important URLs.

5. Server Errors and Downtime

If Googlebot encounters 5xx server errors when trying to crawl your site, it will eventually reduce crawl frequency and may drop your pages from the index entirely. Intermittent downtime is forgivable; chronic server issues are not.

Fix: Check your server logs and Google Search Console's crawl stats report for error spikes. If your hosting provider has frequent outages, it may be time to upgrade.

6. Thin or Duplicate Content

Google may choose not to index pages that offer little unique value. If your page has only a few sentences, or if its content is largely identical to another page on your site (or another site entirely), Google may skip it.

Fix: Add substantive, original content to thin pages. Use canonical tags to resolve duplicate content issues. If a page genuinely doesn't deserve to exist, consider removing it or consolidating it with a stronger page.

7. Manual Penalty

In rare cases, Google issues a manual action against a site for violating its guidelines — spammy link building, keyword stuffing, cloaking, and similar practices. This can result in partial or complete de-indexing.

Fix: Check Google Search Console under Security & Manual Actions → Manual Actions. If there's an active penalty, you'll see a description of the issue and instructions for submitting a reconsideration request.

How to Proactively Improve Your Indexing

Don't just fix problems after they occur. Build indexing best practices into your workflow:

• Submit new pages immediately. Whenever you publish a new page or post, use the URL Inspection tool in Search Console to request indexing.
• Keep your sitemap updated. Make sure new pages are added to your XML sitemap automatically. Remove pages you've deleted or redirected.
• Build internal links. Every new page should be linked from at least one existing page on your site. Orphan pages — pages with no internal links — are harder for Google to find.
• Monitor regularly. Check your Pages report in Search Console at least monthly. Watch for sudden drops in indexed pages, which can indicate a new technical problem.
• Earn external links. Backlinks from other indexed sites help Google discover your pages faster and signal that your content is worth indexing.

Indexing isn't a one-time task. Your site changes, Google's algorithms change, and new pages need attention. Consistent monitoring is what separates sites that rank from sites that don't.

Automate Your Indexing Checks

Manually checking indexing status works when you have five or ten pages. But as your site grows — new blog posts, product pages, landing pages — keeping track of what's indexed and what's not becomes tedious and error-prone.

This is where automated monitoring makes a real difference. Instead of logging into Search Console every week and clicking through reports, you can have an automated system track your indexing status and alert you when pages drop out of the index or fail to get indexed after publishing.

Navi-SEO includes indexing monitoring as part of its ongoing SEO audits. It tracks which pages are indexed, flags new pages that haven't been picked up yet, and identifies technical issues that could be blocking Googlebot — all delivered in a clear monthly report without requiring you to interpret raw data from multiple tools.