Using the URL Inspection Tool

While this seems to be quite straight-forward, the use of the tool in Google Search Console needs to he understood.

Depending on where you are with respect to the Google index the interpretation of the reports is key to getting your pages seen in the Search Engine Report Page (SERP).

Now, in August 2023, I have more of an insight on how this tool is used.

The process

Things that I have found using the tool

When I started using GSC I was not aware of what it offered me in the application of SEO. In fact Google have probably improved the tool.

The Process:

1. Validate the page using the W3C nu validator from the icon on the page - May have to fix any errors
2. If there are validation errors these need to be fixed and the page FTPd to the server (the nu link checks the page that is currently on the server)
3. URL can be copied and pasted into the Inspection tool from the canonical tag or the nu results page.
4. Depending on the message that the tool gives:
   • Page is indexed
   • Page is not indexed but known to Google
5. Select "Live Test" - when this completes you can then view the tested page - I select Screenshot to confirm that the page at least looks correct
6. If the page passes the Live test select the option to request indexing - if you have not exceeded your quota the page will be placed in the Googlebot queue

Discovery

The URL Inspection Tool is also useful to deremine how your page happend to be indexed.

Some of the things that will find are:

• Whether the page is in a sitemap
• What the referring page(s) are
• When the page was lst crawled
• How was it crawled - as a mobile page or other (mobile seems to be the default)
• The Canonical status - How it was declared (meta tag) or Google assigned

A word about Quotas

In addiition there is a quota applied to the number of URL inspections you can make:

When the "daily" renewal runs from and to has yet to be determined. I first came across the message above after an intensive run at looking at pages and checking them. I managed to check one page at 8am and then I hit the limit.

The limit in re-index requests seems to be cycling at 6pm for me and the limit here is 10. (I will have to confirm this)

If you are not careful you will shut yourself out from making re-indexing requests as you have checked too many URLs even though all you wanted to do was to check if they were in the index. The number of checks is far greater, I think, than the number of index requests. Question is: do they reset independantly?
Answer: No - the counter for the checking seems to reset when the indexing quota is reset.

What I try to do, well at least in the interim and until I have checked most of my pages, is to keep a list of at least ten URLs to check. preferably 20 or more as I can check 10 at a time when my quota resets.