Stop guessing why traffic dropped. Our free index checker audits every URL against Google's index, reveals hidden coverage gaps, and gives you a fix-first report. No sign-up, no limits on scans.
Most site owners assume Google indexes everything they publish. That assumption costs traffic. In practice, when you run a free index checker on a client site for the first time, you often find 30-40% of important pages missing from the index. Product pages, landing pages, cornerstone articles — all invisible to searchers.
The core bottleneck isn't content quality. It's technical access. Googlebot can't index what it can't reach or chooses to skip. A free index checker surfaces exactly those failures: blocked resources, orphaned pages, thin content flagged as low value, and soft 404s that look fine in the CMS but return a wrong signal. Every non-indexed page is a lost opportunity you paid to create.
This tool wraps Google's index data into a clean report. No API keys, no spreadsheets. You paste your domain, and within seconds you see which pages are indexed, which are excluded, and — critically — the suspected reason. We then link every issue to a fix path, including Google's own documentation on sitemap best practices to ensure your crawl budget isn't wasted on the wrong URLs.
| Failure Pattern | What the Index Checker Shows | Most Common Root Cause | Quick Fix & Risk Level |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blocked by robots.txt URL returns 200 but noindex | Excluded with reason: 'Blocked by robots.txt' | Disallow rule too broad or left from staging | Remove disallow rule in robots.txt. Risk: low if you audit after change. |
| Orphaned page No internal links point to it | Not found in crawl, flagged as 'Discovered but not indexed' | Page exists in sitemap but has zero internal backlinks | Add contextual links from 2-3 related articles. Risk: medium if page is thin. |
| Thin or duplicate content Google deems it low value | Indexed but later removed, reason: 'Crawled but not indexed' | Under 300 words or near-identical to another URL on same domain | Expand content to 800+ words with unique angle, or 301 redirect. Risk: low for unique content. |
A common situation we see: an e-commerce site launched a new product category with 150 URLs. The team waited two weeks. Zero organic traffic. They ran our free index checker and discovered that only 12 of the 150 pages were indexed. The rest showed 'Crawled but not indexed' — Google had seen them, evaluated them, and decided not to include them.
The fix wasn't more backlinks. It was content depth. Each product description was 120 words of manufacturer copy. After expanding each page to 600+ words with original photography specs, sizing guides, and customer Q&A, the index coverage jumped to 134 pages within three weeks. The free index checker showed the before/after delta in real time.
For a deeper look at how index coverage interacts with backlink strategies — especially for guest posts and niche edits — our related guide on index backlinks service comparison covers which vendors actually deliver indexed links versus empty promises.
Site: a B2B SaaS blog with 200 articles published over 18 months.
Free index checker result: 68 indexed, 132 not indexed.
Breakdown:
Action plan executed:
Result after 4 weeks: 156 pages indexed. Organic traffic increased by 134% from 2,100 to 4,920 sessions per month.
Enter your domain. Tool scans up to 5,000 URLs from sitemap and known structure.
Group URLs by status: indexed, not indexed, blocked, crawled-but-not-indexed.
For each group, identify the fix: content depth, internal links, robots.txt, or noindex tag.
Apply fixes, resubmit URLs via Search Console, and re-run the index checker in 2 weeks.
| Edge Case | What Happens | Why It's Dangerous | How Our Tool Handles It |
|---|---|---|---|
| JavaScript-rendered content SPA or React site | Many checkers only see the HTML shell, report page as indexed when Google sees blank | You think key pages are live, but Google sees an empty frame | We compare the rendered DOM snapshot against Google's cached version to flag mismatches. |
| Hreflang clusters with canonical conflicts Same content in 5 languages | Index checker may count each language variant as a separate page, inflating index size | You overestimate coverage and miss that only the en version is indexed | We deduplicate hreflang groups and show which language variants are actually indexed. |
| Pages behind login or paywall Members-only content | Standard crawler gets blocked, tool reports 'not indexed' even though Google has a paywall-aware version | You panic and remove paywall, losing revenue | We detect structured data like isAccessibleForFree and report the Google indexed version separately. |
Confirm the page is not blocked by robots.txt or a noindex meta tag – these two account for 60% of index failures in our audits.
Check that the page has at least one internal link from another indexed page. Orphan pages almost never get indexed.
Ensure the sitemap includes the page and that the sitemap is submitted to Search Console, not just placed in the root.
Verify the page returns a 200 status code. A 301 redirect or 404 code will prevent indexing even if the content is strong.
Make sure the page has at least 300 unique words of visible text. Pages with mostly images or embedded videos often get skipped.
Run a full index audit at least once per month per client. For sites with frequent content updates or migrations, run it weekly. Agencies that run it only at onboarding miss index drift caused by server changes, plugin updates, or accidental noindex tags.
Yes. Paste the guest post URL into the checker. If it shows 'not indexed', the backlink passes zero equity. Use the index backlinks service comparison guide we linked to find vendors that guarantee indexation for guest posts.
'Crawled but not indexed' means Google visited the page, evaluated it, and chose not to add it to the index. 'Discovered but not indexed' means Google knows the URL exists (via sitemap or link) but hasn't crawled it yet. The fix for the first is content quality; for the second, internal links and crawl budget.
The checker scans up to 5,000 URLs per run to keep results fast and free. For enterprise sites, run the tool on subfolder groups or sitemap segments. We recommend using the bulk API if you need full coverage for larger sites.
This is the most common gap. A sitemap is a suggestion, not a guarantee. Google may skip pages due to thin content, duplicate meta tags, or slow load time. Use our tool to see which specific sitemap URLs are excluded, then address each reason individually.
Search Console aggregates errors but doesn't show you a per-URL index status for all pages in one view. Our tool exposes orphaned pages (no internal links), pages blocked by robots.txt that GSC doesn't flag, and pages with content that Google evaluated and rejected. It's the difference between a dashboard and a diagnostic.
If you resubmit the URL via Search Console's URL inspection tool, indexing can happen within 24-72 hours. Without resubmission, it depends on your site's crawl budget — typically 1-4 weeks. Use the free index checker to confirm the fix took effect rather than guessing.
Yes, we offer a simple API endpoint that returns JSON with index status, crawl date, and exclusion reason. Ideal for agencies building automated monthly reports. Check our API docs for rate limits and authentication.
Quick calculator. Put in the expected monthly value of a page or link batch and the natural waiting time.