A page that is not in Google's index cannot rank for anything, no matter how good it is. Here are the three ways to find out where you stand — starting with the one that takes ten seconds — and what to do about each answer.
Type this into Google. No account, no setup.
site:yoursite.com
You get a rough list of pages Google has stored for your domain. Nothing at all usually means the site is brand new, blocked, or not verified anywhere. Far fewer results than you have pages means some are missing.
The result count is an estimate and it fluctuates — treat it as a smoke test, not a number to track. To check one page, search for its full address instead: site:yoursite.com/your-page
Search Console → paste any address of yours into the search bar at the top.
Google tells you plainly whether the page is on Google, when it last crawled it, whether the page it saw matches what visitors see, and what stopped it if the answer is no. This is the only place you get Google's own verdict on a specific page.
If it says "URL is not on Google", press Request indexing. That asks for a re-crawl — it is a nudge, not a guarantee, and asking twice does not make it faster.
Search Console → Indexing → Pages.
Two numbers: indexed, and not indexed. Below them, the reason for every page Google left out. This is where you find the pages you did not know were missing — which is the real point of checking.
It updates every few days, so a page you published this morning will not appear yet. Use URL Inspection for anything recent.
Measured in your own Search Console data — we don’t promise, we report.
The Pages report gives a reason for every page it left out. The wording is Google's; the translation is ours.
Crawled — currently not indexed
Google read the page and chose not to store it. Nearly always a quality or duplication judgement: the page is thin, or it says roughly what another page of yours already says.
Do this: Make the page genuinely worth a result — or merge it into the stronger page and redirect.
Discovered — currently not indexed
Google knows the address but has not got round to fetching it. Common on new sites, and on pages nothing links to.
Do this: Link to it from a page Google already visits often. That is the single most effective nudge.
Duplicate, Google chose a different canonical
Google decided another page is the real version of this one. Often a www / non-www or trailing-slash variant, or two pages covering the same search.
Do this: Pick one address, make the other point to it, and stop competing with yourself.
Excluded by "noindex" tag
Your own page tells Google to stay out. Frequently left over from a staging build — and easy to miss, because the page looks perfectly normal to visitors.
Do this: Remove the noindex tag, redeploy, then request indexing.
Blocked by robots.txt
Google was not allowed to fetch the page at all, so it never saw the content.
Do this: Check robots.txt for a Disallow rule that catches more than you meant.
Page with redirect / Not found (404)
Working as intended. A redirected or deleted page is not supposed to be indexed.
Do this: Nothing. Not every "not indexed" line is a problem to solve.
Request indexing is a request. Pressing it repeatedly does nothing, and no tool can make Google index a page it has decided is not worth a result. What genuinely moves the needle is unglamorous: give the page a reason to exist, and link to it from a page Google already visits often.
OptiSearch asks Google about your pages on a schedule and tells you which ones are missing — alongside the fix that usually gets them in. No page-by-page clicking.
For an established site, hours to a few days. For a brand-new site with no links pointing at it, several weeks is normal — Google has no reason to hurry until something tells it the site matters. Publishing, linking internally and earning a first few external links all speed it up more than repeatedly pressing Request indexing.
No, and this is the most common mix-up. Indexed means Google has stored the page and it is allowed to appear. Ranking means it beats other pages for a search someone actually makes. Indexing is the entry ticket, not the result.
Usually not. On a new site it just means Google has not indexed anything yet. Check three things: that the site is verified in Search Console, that robots.txt is not blocking everything, and that your pages do not carry a leftover noindex tag from development. If all three are fine, the answer is patience plus links.
No. Privacy policies, terms, login screens, checkout and thank-you pages exist for people who already found you. Whether Google stores them tells you nothing, and "fixing" them is wasted effort. Judge the pages you actually want found.
A sitemap helps Google discover addresses. It does not persuade Google to store them — that decision is about whether the page is worth a result. A sitemap plus an internal link from a page Google already reads is a much stronger signal than a sitemap alone.