Developing a world-class website requires time, money, creativity, and effort. Yet all of this will go in vain if your website–or some of its important pages–do not show up on Google search.
As more than 93% of all internet activity begins with a search, your webpage must be indexed. This is of utmost necessity if you have created a new page or published a new blog.
In order to get your web pages indexed, Googlebot must crawl your website, and only after it ensures that your website meets the guidelines for indexing, does it index your page.
Why URL Inspection Tool Matters
In June 2018, Google came up with a URL Inspection Tool as part of its Search Console. Using this tool you can get detailed information about crawl, index and serving information regarding your pages by simply entering its URL.
In addition, if your page is not indexed, it tells you why making it easier for you to track down the issue and fix it.
With the help of this tool, your non-indexed pages will no longer remain a mystery and you can understand what went wrong.
What Tasks Does URL Inspection Tool Perform?
The main job of the URL Inspection Tool is to collate and provide information about Google’s indexed version of a particular page. The details could be related to the different indexing issues resulting from not following Google’s indexing guidelines properly or to AMP and structured data errors.
The list of tasks the tool performs 4 major tasks:
1. Providing the Current Index Status of a URL
This helps you see whether your page is indexed or not. If not, then why?
2. Inspecting a Live URL
This relates to checking whether the URL of your website is indexable or not.
3. Requesting a URL to be Crawled
This feature allows you to request Googlebot to crawl or re-crawl.
4. Viewing a Rendered Version
This allows you to see how Googlebot views your page.
Apart from this, the inspection tool also allows you to see page code, list of resources, and a few other information related to the link. We will discuss about the above status one by one.
How to See the Current Index Status of a URL
Very simple! Click “URL Inspection” in the search console and enter the URL you want information about. Make sure the URL you are inspecting is your own property as anything outside the current property will not be inspected.
You can also get information about duplicate pages if any. The tool also helps you inspect both AMP and non-AMP URLs. However, there is an external limit to the inspection requests you can raise for a particular property.