How to Check If Google Has Indexed Your Website

If you want to know whether Google has indexed your website, the quickest check is to type site:yourdomain.co.uk into Google. If pages come back, Google knows about your site. For a definite answer on a specific page, use the URL Inspection tool in Google Search Console. It's free and it tells you exactly what Google thinks of that page.

Below I'll go through both checks, what the results mean, and what to do if a page isn't showing up.

What "indexed" actually means

Google works in roughly three stages. It finds your pages (through links or a sitemap). It crawls them, which just means it visits and reads them. Then it decides whether to index them, meaning it stores them so they can appear in search results.

A page has to be indexed before it can rank for anything. Being indexed doesn't guarantee it'll rank well, but if it isn't indexed, it can't appear in search at all. That's why it's worth checking first, before worrying about keywords or anything else.

Check 1: the site: search (30 seconds)

Go to Google and type:

site:yourdomain.co.uk

There's no space after the colon, and you don't need the https:// or www. You'll get a list of pages from your site that Google has in its index.

This is a handy sanity check, but don't treat it as a full count. Google says the site: operator doesn't necessarily show every URL it has indexed, and the order of results is fairly random. So:

• Lots of results: good news, Google knows your site.
• A few results, but a page you care about is missing: check that page properly with Check 2.
• No results at all: either the site is very new, or something is stopping Google. Keep reading.

You can also check one page by searching for its full address, for example yourdomain.co.uk/services. Google itself suggests this as a way to confirm a page is actually showing.

Check 2: URL Inspection in Google Search Console (the proper answer)

If you haven't set up Google Search Console yet, it's worth doing. It's free, and it's the only place Google tells you directly what's happening with your site. You'll need to verify that you own the domain, which usually means adding a small record to your domain settings or a tag to your site.

Once you're in:

1. Paste the full address of the page into the search bar at the top.
2. Wait a few seconds for the report.
3. Read the verdict.

"URL is on Google" means the page is indexed and can appear in results. Google is careful to say this isn't an absolute guarantee, but it's the result you want.

"URL is not on Google" means it isn't indexed. The report will usually tell you why, and it also shows the last time Google crawled the page. If there's no crawl date at all, Google simply hasn't found the page yet.

There's also a Test live URL button. This checks the page as it is right now, rather than the version Google last saw. It's useful after you've fixed something.

Check 3: the Page indexing report (the bigger picture)

In Search Console, under Indexing → Pages, you'll see how many of your pages are indexed and how many aren't, grouped by reason. On a small site, just scan the "not indexed" reasons for any important pages.

A few you'll commonly see:

• Excluded by 'noindex' tag: the page is telling Google not to index it. Fine for a thank-you page, a problem for your homepage.
• Alternate page with proper canonical tag or Duplicate reasons: Google has picked a different version of the page as the main one. Often harmless (for example, www and non-www versions).
• Discovered – currently not indexed: Google knows the page exists but hasn't crawled it yet.
• Crawled – currently not indexed: Google has visited but decided not to index it, for now. Thin or near-duplicate content is a common reason.
• Not found (404): the page doesn't exist, often an old link.

Common reasons a page isn't indexed (and the fix)

In my experience with small business sites, it's usually one of these:

• The site is brand new. Google says crawling can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. Patience genuinely is part of the answer here.
• A leftover "noindex" setting. Many website builders and WordPress have a "discourage search engines" or "hide from search" option that gets switched on while the site is being built and never switched off. Check your settings.
• Blocked in robots.txt. This file can stop Google crawling parts of your site. Visit yourdomain.co.uk/robots.txt and look for a Disallow: / line, which blocks everything.
• No links pointing to the page. If a page isn't in your menu, isn't linked from other pages and isn't in your sitemap, Google may never find it.
• The page is very thin. A page with two lines of text, or one that's almost identical to another page, may be crawled but not indexed. Make it genuinely useful.

Asking Google to index a page

Once you've fixed the problem:

1. Run Test live URL in URL Inspection to confirm Google can now access it.
2. Click Request indexing.
3. For a whole site, submit your sitemap under Indexing → Sitemaps (it's often at yourdomain.co.uk/sitemap.xml).

There's a limit on how many individual pages you can request, and requesting more than once won't speed things up. Request it, then give it time.

Want a hand?

If you've checked all this and still can't work out why Google is ignoring your site, it's usually something technical that's quick to fix once spotted. My SEO audit covers indexing as one of the first things I look at, or you can start with an SEO snapshot to get a feel for where you stand. And if you're working through the basics yourself, the sole trader SEO checklist is a good next read.