Did you just launch a new website or publish a new article? Congrats! To check if it’s on Google, use the following tips on advanced google search tricks.
Is my website on Google? If so, which pages?
To do a quick check on which pages of your website are on Google, go to the Google search bar and type
site:[site name]
If I Google “site:jenniferprufer.com,” it says that I have about 103 webpages from my website indexed by Google (another way of saying that they’re on Google).
If none of the pages on your website are on Google, it’ll say that your search did not match any documents.
How can I check if specific category pages are on Google?
If you want to check if specific directories or folders on your website are on Google, include it in the site search. For example, one of my categories of my articles on my website is “business.” If I want to check to see if the business articles are on Google, I’d type
site:jenniferpruer.com/business
How can I check if pages around a specific topic are on Google?
To find all pages that have a keyword in the URL, type
inurl:[keyword]
If I want to see which pages on my website have the word “productive” in the URL, I can combine this search operator with the site: operator like so
site:jenniferprufer.com inurl:productive
Instead, if I want to see which pages on my website have the word “productive” in the title tag, I can use the intitle search operator:
intitle:[keyword]
*Bonus tip: spy on what your competitors wrote regarding a specific topic by doing a site search for their website
How can I exclude certain categories or keywords from the site search?
Use the – search operator. For example, if I want to see how many pages of my website are on Google minus the blog articles, I’d type
site:jenniferprufer.com -inurl:blog
What can I do if my site is not on Google?
Create an account with Google Search Console (if you search for it, it should be the first result), and then follow the directions to confirm that you’re the site owner. From there, go to sitemaps, and then insert the URL of your sitemap. Google will verify whether it can detect your sitemap correctly.
If you don’t have any sitemap, search for “create sitemap.” There are tons of free tools out there that will create one for you. Just input your website, e.g., https://jenniferprufer.com, and then once it’s created, download it, and then upload it to your root directory (ask your admin or web host to upload it for you if you’re not sure how to upload it to your root directory).
What can I do if a certain page on my website is not on Google?
Go to Google Search Console, click on “URL inspection,” and then copy over the URL that you want to inspect. If it is indeed indexed, and appears in Google Search results, it’ll tell you so. If it’s not, click on “request indexing.”
Word of caution: Know exactly which URL resolves before inserting it into the inspection tool. For example, if I type in https://jenniferprufer.com/seo, it’ll say that that URL is not on Google. That’s because that page resolves on https://jenniferprufer.com/seo/ with a trailing slash. Unless you’re doing an SEO audit or trying to inspect duplicate content on multiple URLs, I recommend copying over the URL from your browser once the page has loaded.
Finally, Bing’s webmaster tools work similarly, so you can replicate the steps above on Bing to check your website’s index status there.
If you liked this article, I think you’ll also like this one here: Website content checklist for bloggers and online publishers
What an interesting article! This is one of the questions that I always ask to myself!
Thanks for sharing
Glad it was useful, Lina!
wow these are fabulous tips! thank you so much!!! i will be trying them out for sure.
Joy at The Joyous Living
Great- let me know if any questions.
Solid info if you want to be taken seriously by Google. Thx for sharing.
Glad you enjoyed it 🙂
I learn something today, will check and Google my site too. Thank you for sharing information to us. 🙂
You’re very welcome, Agnes!
This is a very good resource! I have saved and bookmarked it for future reference!
So glad to hear that! Always open to topic suggestions.
Thanks for this tip. I will try your method and check for my website too!