URL Inspection Tool - Search Console Help (original) (raw)

About the URL Inspection report and test

The URL Inspection tool provides information about Google's indexed version of a specific page, and also allows you to test whether a URL might be indexable. Information includes details about structured data, video, linked AMP, and indexing/indexability.

There are two ways to access the URL Inspection tool:

Open the URL Inspection Tool

Common tasks

What isn't tested

The test results don't test for the following things, which are required to appear in Google:


See the status of a URL in the Google index

You can request detailed Google index information about a URL in your property, including indexability, any rich results or videos found, and more.

To see information in the Google index about a URL:

  1. Open the URL Inspection tool.
  2. Enter the complete URL to inspect. A few notes:
    • The URL must be in the current property. To test a URL in a property that you don't own, use the appropriate non-owner test, such as the Rich Results test or AMP test.
    • AMP vs non-AMP URLs: You can inspect both AMP and non-AMP URLs. The tool provides information about the corresponding AMP and non-AMP version of the page.
    • Canonical/Alternate status: If the page is an alternate/duplicate versions, the tool also provides information about the canonical version, if the canonical version is in a property that you own.
  3. Read Understanding the results.
  4. If you've fixed issues since the data was acquired, test the live URL to see if Google thinks these issues are fixed. Note that not all issues can be tested.
  5. Optionally request indexing for the URL.

There is a daily limit of inspection requests for each property that you own.

About the indexed URL status

Key points

Understanding the results

  1. Read the overall page status at the top of the tool to see whether or not the URL is eligible to appear in Google Search results: URL is on Google means that the URL is eligible to appear in Search results, but is not guaranteed to be there. URL is not on Google means that the URL can't appear in Search results.
  2. Expand the Page indexing or Video indexing sections to see more details:
    • Discovery: How Google found the URL.
    • 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 URL is not on Google, the reason why can generally be found here.
    • Indexing: The canonical URL that Google chose for this page.
  3. Enhancements & experience: If you have structured data, if the page is an AMP or has an associated AMP, you will see details in the Enhancements section.
  4. 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 index status includes the following information:

Overall page status

Overall page status appears in a card at the top of the page

The top section of the report provides a summary evaluation about whether or not the URL is eligible to appear in Google Search results (with some caveats). The following values are possible:

URL is on Google

URL is on Google, but has issues

URL is not on Google

URL is an alternate version

Page indexing (Can Google fetch and index the page?)

This section provides information about whether Google could find and index the page.

Indexing status

Whether or not the URL is indexed. The section heading includes a short, descriptive reason for the status of the URL, explaining why the URL is or isn't on Google. The following values are supported:

Sitemaps

Any sitemaps submitted using the Sitemaps report or listed in the robots.txt file for this site that point to this URL. 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.

Crawled as

The user agent type used for the crawl (desktop or mobile).

Crawl allowed?

Indicates whether your site allowed Google to crawl the page or blocked it with a robots.txt rule. If crawling isn't allowed, but you want to allow it, use the robots.txt tester to find the rule that is blocking Google, and remove the blocking rule. Test your rule using the URL that you inspected here. You should be able to open the robots.txt file in your browser at <_site_root_>/robots.txt, for example: https://example.com/robots.txt.

Page fetch

Whether or not Google could actually get the page from your server. Fetching can be successful even if the page is not indexed for another reason. Possible values:

Indexing allowed?

Whether or not your page explicitly disallowed indexing. If indexing is disallowed, the reason is shown here, and the page won't appear in Google Search results. To block indexing, use the noindex tag or directive on your URL. If the indexifembedded attribute or header is found in the page in combination with noindex, the page will be indexed only when it is embedded.

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 any noindex directives. When this happens, your page might appear in Search results even if indexing is blocked by your site.

User-declared canonical

If your page explicitly declares a canonical URL, it will be shown here. If your page is not an alternate page, the value None is fine here. If your page is one of a set of alternate pages, we recommend explicitly declaring the canonical URL. You can declare a canonical URL in several ways: a <link rel="canonical"> tag, an HTTP header, a sitemap, or a few other methods. There is no guarantee that Google will choose your preferred canonical, but we will take this into consideration. For AMP pages, the canonical 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 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 and a mobile version, Google will probably show the URL appropriate for the user's device.

Note that this value can be a few hours out of date from our index value.

Video indexing (Videos found on the page)

This section is only present if a video was detected on an indexed page. The indexing status describes whether a video was or wasn't indexed on this page. The live inspection only tells you if a video was detected; indexing status and indexing issues won't appear in the live inspection.

Only one video can be indexed per page. If the page has only one video, the information is shown for that video. If the page has multiple videos, Google tries to index videos in order of best preference, and stops when one video can be indexed. The information shown in the report is for the video that was indexed, if successful, or for the top candidate, if video indexing failed. Learn more about video indexing.

Video indexing status

The following video indexing statuses can be shown for a page where a video is detected:

Additional video information

Additional video information shown in the report is described here.

Video indexing issues

Any of the following issues, shown in the Video details section, can prevent a video from being indexed. If multiple videos were found on the page, the issue shown applies to the best candidate video.

Reason Description
Video is not the main content of the page The video is not the main content or primary focus for this page; only videos that are the main content of the page are eligible for indexing. Here are some examples of page types where the video is supplementary to the textual content, and not the primary focus of the page: A blog post where the video is complementary to the text rather than the primary content of the page A product details page with a complementary video A video category page that lists multiple videos of equal prominence
Cannot determine video position and size The video player is not present in the page when loaded. Typically this occurs when the page has an image where the player will appear (often a screenshot or an image of the player) that must be clicked to start playback. To fix, load the video player at its actual size and position when the page is loaded, without requiring any user interaction.
MRSS failure; try using schema.org instead You are using MRSS (media RSS) to describe the video, and Google had a problem processing the description. Try using schema.org markup instead to describe your video.
No thumbnail URL provided No thumbnail image was specified for this video, and Google was unable to generate one for you. Provide a link to a thumbnail for your video using structured data, a sitemap, or an mRSS file. If you provided a thumbnail URL using structured data and got this error, check that you are not defining a different thumbnail URL for the same video in an HTML tag. You should provide the same title, thumbnail URL, and video URL in all sources (sitemap, HTML tags, meta tags, and structured data) that describe the same video on the same page.
Unsupported thumbnail format The thumbnail image specified is in an unsupported format, based on the thumbnail file extension. Make sure to use only supported image formats for your thumbnail image, and to specify the proper format extension.
Invalid thumbnail size The thumbnail specified was an invalid size, and Google was unable to generate a thumbnail for you. Provide a thumbnail of a supported size.
Thumbnail blocked by robots.txt The thumbnail provided is blocked to Google by a robots.txt rule. If the image is hosted on another site, contact the site to see how you can unblock your image, or else provide a link to a thumbnail image that can be reached by Google without any login requirements and not blocked by robots.txt rules.
Thumbnail is transparent The thumbnail provided has a transparency level that exceeds the acceptable threshold: at least 80% of the image must have an alpha level above 250. Transparent thumbnails are not allowed for video indexing.
Thumbnail could not be crawled due to hostload Your site seems to be at maximum capacity for Google crawling requests. Google can't access the video thumbnail needed for indexing until your traffic load (as estimated by Google) drops. For more details, read the crawl budget documentation.
Thumbnail could not be reached Google was unable to access the provided thumbnail at the URL provided. (This is not a robots.txt issue.) Perhaps the image is password protected, or no longer exists at the URL provided.
Video not processed Google detected that the page has at least one video on it, but decided not to index the video.
Video not processed yet The video is being processed; check back in a few days to see if processing is complete.
Video not found on host service The specified video is missing from the hosting service, or is on a private hosting service that isn't reachable by Google's crawler. Visit the service using the video ID to confirm, and then update your page with the proper ID or URL for your video hosting service.
Thumbnail is missing or invalid The thumbnail was not provided, not available, or invalid. For technical reasons, the system can't distinguish between these issues. Check that a valid thumbnail URL is provided in a supported format, with an accurate file extension, and that the thumbnail is available to Google.
Invalid thumbnail The thumbnail is invalid for some reason not covered by any other thumbnail error listed here. Confirm that you have specified a thumbnail image, that it's following all the guidelines for thumbnails, and that it is available to Google.

Enhancements (AMP, rich results)

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

Clicking a section for an enhancement will open up a sub-page for that enhancement. To navigate back to the main inspection page, click URL Inspection at the top of the page.

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

AMP

If you inspect a non-AMP page with a linked AMP version, or are inspecting an AMP page directly, you can see information about it by selecting the AMP result. Use this information to help find and troubleshoot AMP-specific indexing and other issues.

Details shown here apply to the AMP version referenced by the current page; they do not apply to the current page unless the AMP is the canonical 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 AMP or Web Story page inspected with the URL Inspection tool can have the following possible statuses:

For an interactive AMP code debugger, you can use the AMP Test.

Rich results detected on the page

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. Expand Detected items to see details about any structured data found on the page, with any issues marked. Click an issue highlighted in the report to see the problematic code, where possible.

For an interactive structured data debugger, where you can modify and test structured data, use the Rich Results test, which also shows a preview of some kinds of structured data.

The following rich result types are supported:

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.

Additional response data

To see additional response data such as the raw HTML returned, the HTTP headers, JavaScript console output, and any page resources loaded, click View crawled page.

Additional response information is available only for URLs with a status of URL is on Google or URL is on Google, but has issues.

The crawler used to generate the data depends on where you are when you open the side panel:

A screenshot of the rendered page is available only in a live test.

Live URL test

Run a live test of a URL in your property to check for indexing issues, structured data, and more. The life test is useful when fixing your page, to test whether an issue was fixed.

To run a live test for potential indexing errors:

  1. Inspect the URL. Note: it's fine if the page hasn't been indexed yet, or has failed indexing, but the page must be accessible from the internet without any login requirements.
  2. Click Test live URL.
  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 clicking Google Index or Live Test on the page.
  5. To rerun a live test, click the re-run test button Reload on the test page.
  6. To see details about the page, including a screenshot and HTTP response headers, click View crawled page.

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

About the live test results

Key points:

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

No. The live URL test only confirms whether Googlebot can access your page for indexing. There is no definitive test that can guarantee whether your page will be included in the Google index. 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 live test results include the following information:

Overall page status (live test)

The top section of the report 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, but it means that the URL can be crawled and parsed. The URL Inspection tool doesn't take into account manual actions, content removals, quality and security issues, or temporarily blocked URLs.

Important: The live test does not cover all possible indexing conditions. Issues marked "no" in this table are not checked in the live test, and can occur when the page is indexed, no matter what the live URL status is.

If the page has a redirect, Google will test the redirect target without indicating that there is a redirection, or which URL was finally tested in the live test. The indexed report will show redirections.

The following values are possible:

URL is available to Google

URL is available to Google, but has issues

URL is not available to Google

Availability (live test)

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

The test doesn't check that the page conforms to Google's quality and security guidelines, any manual actions or security issues, content removals, or temporarily blocked URLs. Your page must pass all these checks during indexing to be available in Google Search results.

Availability status

The availability status of the live URL. The following values are possible:

Time

The time of the live test.

Crawled as

The user agent type used for the live test.

Crawl allowed?

Indicates whether your site will allow Google to crawl (visit) the page, or block it with a robots.txt rule. If you don't want 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. Read how to fix a blocked page.

Page fetch

Whether or not Google could actually get the page from your server. If crawling is not allowed, this field will show a failure. If crawling is allowed, page fetch might still fail for various reasons. See explanations of fetch failures.

Indexing allowed?

Whether or not your page explicitly disallows 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 any noindex directives. Because of this, your page might appear in Search results. If the indexifembedded attribute or header is found in the page in combination with noindex, the page will be indexed only when it is embedded.

User-declared canonical

If your page explicitly declares a canonical URL, it will be shown here. If your page is not a duplicate, None is fine here. If your page is one of a set of similar or duplicate pages, we recommend explicitly declaring the canonical URL. You can declare a canonical URL in several ways: a <link rel="canonical"> tag, an HTTP header, a sitemap, or a few other methods. There is no guarantee that Google will choose this URL, but we will take this into consideration. For AMP pages, the canonical should be the non-AMP version (unless it is a self-canonical AMP).

Index coverage issues not tested in the live test

The live test can't detect all page conditions, or predict indexing success with 100% confidence. This is because some types of issues are not, or cannot be tested in real time, such as canonical selection or whether a URL was submitted in a sitemap. If a condition is not checked, the live test result might be URL is available to Google, when in fact indexing will fail due to the condition not tested in the live test.

Here are indexing issues from the Page Indexing report that can't be tested in the live test:

Other enhancements: AMP, structured data (live test)

AMP

See the indexed AMP section for more information.

Which URL is tested?

To determine the AMP URL to test, the test fetches the submitted URL using a desktop user agent and follows all redirects. After that:

Structured data

See the indexed AMP section for more information.

Additional response data (live test)

Click View tested page to see additional response data such as a screenshot of the rendered page, the raw HTML returned, the HTTP headers, JavaScript console output, and any page resources loaded.

Additional response data is available in the live test only when the test status is URL is available to Google or URL is available to Google, but has issues.

The crawler used to generate the data depends on where you are when you open the side panel:

Site-wide availability issues

If the live Availability status indicates a site-wide issue, here are the possible Page fetch values:

Note that server errors can be transient, and so you might encounter server errors during a live test that won't occur during crawling or, conversely, your live test might succeed when a server error might have occurred during crawling.

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.

A screenshot is available only in a live test with a successful test result. Screenshots are not available for the indexed URL, or for non-successful fetches of the live test. 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 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. Click 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:

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>.

Troubleshoot a missing page

If you think your page hasn't been indexed, here's how to verify and troubleshoot the issue.

  1. Check the index status of the page. Inspect the URL, either by entering the URL in the inspection URL textbox, or by clicking the inspect button shown next to a URL in one of the other Search Console reports (you might need to hover over a URL to see this button).
  2. The initial test results show you Google's information about the URL in the Google index. These Google index results are used to generate search results. Note: This initial page is not a live test of the URL. Live testing is covered later.
    • If the URL status starts with "URL is on Google", then the page should be available in Google Search. You can verify this by searching for the URL in Google. If the page isn't in search results:
      * Check the Manual Actions report and Security Issues report for issues affecting that page. Issues on either report can prevent your page from appearing in search results.
      * Check to see if someone has temporarily blocked the page.
      * If none of the previous issues affect the page, continue debugging the issue as described here.
    • If the URL status is "URL is not available to Google" or "URL is not on Google", expand the Availability section.
      * The availability section header should include a label briefly describing why the URL could not be indexed. See the list of values and possible fix instructions. If the label is URL is unknown to Google, it means that Google hasn't seen that URL before, so you should request that the page be indexed. Indexing typically takes a few days.
      * If Crawl allowed? is "No," that means Google can't crawl the page because of a robots.txt rule, which prevents Google from crawling the page. Read how to check and fix this issue.
      * If Indexing allowed? is "No", that means your site is returning a "noindex" tag or header that prevents Google from indexing the page and showing it in Google Search results. You'll have to remove this tag or header from the page before Google will index it.
  3. If you've changed the page since the crawl time listed, you can test your current version of the page by clicking Test live URL. If the status shown at the top of the page valid, then the page can probably be indexed (note that not all indexing issues can be detected by the live test).

Known issues

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