How to Check if Google and Bing Have Indexed Your Website

What Does Indexed Mean?

When Google or Bing visits your website, it reads your pages and stores the information in its index — a vast database of web content that it searches through when someone types a query. If a page is in the index, it can appear in search results. If it is not, it effectively does not exist as far as that search engine is concerned.

Indexing is not automatic or instant. Search engines discover pages by following links, reading sitemaps, and revisiting sites they already know about. A brand new website may take days or weeks to be indexed. An established site may have pages that have never been indexed, or pages that have been removed from the index for various reasons.

Checking whether your pages are indexed is one of the most basic and important things you can do to understand your website's visibility in search.

How to Check Google Indexing

Method 1 — The site: Search Operator

The quickest way to check how many of your pages Google has indexed is to use the site: operator directly in Google search. Go to google.com and type the following into the search box — replacing the example with your own domain:

Google will return a list of all the pages from your website that it currently has in its index. The number shown at the top of the results gives a rough indication of how many pages are indexed — though this number is an estimate and can vary.

To check whether a specific page is indexed, include the full URL:

If the page appears in the results, it is indexed. If nothing is returned, Google either has not yet indexed it or has removed it from the index.

Method 2 — Check a Specific URL in Google Search

You can also simply paste the full URL of any page directly into the Google search box. If the page is indexed, it will typically appear at or near the top of the results. This is a quick way to check individual pages without needing any tools or accounts.

Method 3 — Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free tool provided by Google that gives you detailed information about how Google sees your website. It is the most accurate and comprehensive way to check indexing status.

Once set up and verified, Search Console allows you to check the indexing status of any individual URL, see which pages are indexed and which are not, and understand the reason why pages may have been excluded. It also shows you any crawl errors Google has encountered on your site.

Setting up Search Console requires verifying that you own the website, which typically involves adding a small piece of code to your site or uploading a verification file. If your website was built by a web designer, they should be able to do this for you.

How to Check Bing Indexing

The site: and url: Search Operators

Bing supports the same site: operator as Google. Go to bing.com and type:

This returns a list of your pages that Bing currently has in its index. To check whether a specific page is indexed, Bing also supports the url: operator — paste the full address of the page you want to check:

If the page is returned, Bing has it in its index. If nothing is returned, it has not been indexed by Bing.

Bing Webmaster Tools

Bing offers its own webmaster platform — Bing Webmaster Tools — which functions similarly to Google Search Console. It is free to use and provides indexing reports, crawl information, and the ability to submit pages for indexing. It is worth setting up if Bing traffic matters to your business, though for most UK businesses Google remains the primary focus.

Why Pages May Not Be Indexed

If you find that pages from your website are not appearing in Google or Bing, there are several common reasons.

• The page is too new — Google and Bing may simply not have visited it yet. New pages on established sites are usually indexed within days; new websites can take several weeks.
• The page is blocked by robots.txt — robots.txt is a file on your website that tells search engines which pages they are and are not allowed to visit. If this file has been set up incorrectly, it may be blocking pages you want indexed.
• The page has a noindex tag — a noindex instruction in the page code tells search engines to exclude that page from their index. This is sometimes added intentionally for pages like thank-you pages or admin areas, but can occasionally be applied to pages by mistake.
• The page has no inbound links — search engines discover new pages by following links. A page with no links pointing to it, either from within your own site or from external sources, may never be found.
• The page content is thin or duplicated — Google may choose not to index pages it considers to have little value, including pages with very little content or content that is duplicated from elsewhere on your site or the web.
• The website is too new — a brand new domain with no history or inbound links will take longer to be crawled and indexed than an established site.

What to Do if Your Pages Are Not Indexed

If you have checked and found that important pages are missing from Google's index, the steps below cover the most common fixes.

• Submit your sitemap to Google Search Console — a sitemap is a file that lists all the pages on your website so search engines can find them easily. Most website platforms generate one automatically, usually found at yourdomain.co.uk/sitemap.xml. Submitting it via Search Console prompts Google to crawl your site more thoroughly.
• Request indexing via Search Console — for individual pages, you can use the URL Inspection tool in Search Console to check the page's status and request that Google indexes it.
• Check your robots.txt file — make sure it is not accidentally blocking pages you want indexed. Your web designer can check this for you.
• Check for noindex tags — ask your web designer to confirm that important pages do not have a noindex instruction in their code.
• Add internal links — make sure every page on your site can be reached by following links from your homepage or navigation. Pages that are not linked to from anywhere are much less likely to be found and indexed.
• Be patient — for new websites, indexing simply takes time. Submitting your sitemap and ensuring your site is technically sound is usually all that is needed.