How To Fix Google Search Console Indexing Issues

 How To Fix Google Search Console Indexing Issues

Google search console is a free SEO tool used by bloggers and website owners to gather information and reports about their websites. It gathers reliable data's directly from google.

Before you can get data's about your site from Google, Google must have crawled and indexed your site with your permission.

Most issues site owners have is that their sites cannot be crawled by google or that it can't be Indexed. This is categorized as index issues.

These index issues can be your fault or not, you just have to find out. If your website does not get index by google, it won't appear on search engines. This is why I'm bringing to you how you can fix these index issues. Make sure you read the post to the end.

FIXING INDEXING ISSUES ON SEARCH CONSOLE

To check whether you have any indexing issues, go to Index > Coverage and check the status of your website’s pages.

Pay attention to the Error and Valid with warning sections to figure out what’s wrong with these pages and how to fix the issues.

Errors

Error report shows all the cases when Google hasn't managed to index your pages because they either don’t exist or have been restricted. 

You can click on each error to a get list of affected URLs. From there, you can click on each URL and have it inspected by Google Search Console. This will result in a quick report on the page’s current indexing status and possible problems. 

Below are the most common indexing errors and some tips on how you can solve them:

Submitted URL cannot be indexed. These types of issues occurs when you have asked Google to index a URL, but the page cannot be accessed. The first thing to look out for, is whether you actually intended for the page to be displayed in search or not.

If you don’t want your page to be indexed, you have to recall your index request so that Google can stop trying. To do that, submit the URL for inspection and see why Google is trying to index it in the first place. The most likely reason is you have added the URL to one of your sitemaps by mistake, in which case just edit the sitemap and remove the URL.

If you do want your page to be indexed, then you have to stop restricting the access. There are six different ways you might be restricting Google, so here is what you can do in each case:

• Submitted URL marked ‘noindex’ issue can be solved by removing the noindex tag from the page's HTML code, or deleting a noindex header from the HTTP request.

• Submitted URL not found (404) means that the page does not exist, and the server redirected to 404 status code. Check if the content was relocated, and set up a 301 redirect to a new location.

• Submitted URL seems to be a Soft 404. This error appears when your server labeled the page with OK status, but Google decided the page is 404 (not found). This may occur because there’s little content on the page, or because the page moved to a new location. Check if the page has good comprehensive content and add some if it’s thin. Or set up a 301 redirect if the content was moved.

• Submitted URL blocked by robots.txt error can be solved by running the robots.txt tester tool on the URL, and updating the robots.txt file on your website to change or delete the rule.

• Submitted URL returns unauthorized request (401) means that Google cannot access your page without verification. You can either remove authorization requirements or let Googlebot access the page by verifying identity.

• Submitted URL returned 403 error happens when Google has no credentials to perform authorized access. If you want to get this page indexed, allow anonymous access.

MUST READ: Fastest Way To Find Out If Your Page Has Been Indexed by Google

Once you’ve removed whatever was restricting the access, submit the URL for indexing using the URL inspection tool.

Server error (5xx) occurs when Googlebot fails to access the server. The server may have crashed, timed out, or been down when Googlebot came around. Check the URL with the Inspect URL tool to see if it displays an error. If yes, check the server, see what Google suggests to solve the problem, and initiate validation once again if the server is fine.

Redirect error may occur if a redirect chain is too long, a redirect URL exceeds the max URL length (2 MB for Google Chrome), there’s a bad URL in the chain, or there’s a redirect loop. Check the URL with a debugging tool such as Lighthouse to find out the exact issue.

Valid with warning

If Google indexed your page but is not sure if it was necessary, then the pages will be displayed as valid with warning.

In terms of SEO, warnings may bring you even more trouble than errors, as Google may display the pages that you didn’t want to show.

Indexed, though blocked by robots.txt warning appears when the page is indexed by Google despite being blocked by your robots.txt file. How to fix this issue? Decide on whether you want to block this page or not. If you want to block it, then add the noindex tag to the page, limit access to the page by login request, or remove the page by going to Index > Removals > New request.

Note: many SEOs mistakenly assume that robots.txt is the right mechanism to hide the page from Google. This is not true — robots.txt serves mainly to prevent overloading your website with requests. If you block the page with robots.txt, Google will still display it in search results.

Indexed without content means the page is indexed, but, for some reason, Google cannot read the content. This may happen because the page is cloaked, or the format of the page is not recognized by Google. To fix this issue, check the code of your page and follow Google’s tips on how to make your website accessible for users and search engines.

ASLO READ:

How To Make Your Blog Appear on Google Search Engine

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How To Make Up-to $100 A Day With Google Adsense

Paying Money To Bloggers Or Site Owners For Backlinks Is A Crime

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