How to check if the page is indexable for SEs?

[boostaman]

Hi, I'm building the extension for Chrome, which should show me the status of the indexability of the page I'm on.

So, I need to know all the methods to check if the page has the potential to be crawled and indexed by a Search Engines. I've come up with a few methods:

• Check the URL in robots.txt file (if it's not disallowed)
• Check page metas (if there are not noindex meta)
• Check if page is the same for unregistered users (for those pages only available for registered users of the site)

Are there any more methods to check if a particular page is indexable (or not closed for indexation) by Search Engines?

Thanks in advance!

[Mobilio]

You also can check for HTTP header results for crawling too:
https://developers.google.com/webmasters/control-crawl-index/docs/robots_meta_tag

Also you can use some of Google services for this. Specially PageSpeed API:
https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/v2/reference/

Once you call this API it return JSON with list of blocked resources. It's little bit slower but i found that this is safe. Some hostings have IDS (intruder detection systems) and when some crawl them little bit aggressive they block whole IP or IP range. I know few cases when site is OK to be seen from users, but blocked from Google IP. Webmasters wasn't happy when they discover this. They call hosting few times and got "there isn't issues from our side, we didn't block anything". And 6 hours later they get "seems that another department was blocked this server for few specific IPs".

About checking for logged/nonloged users. You can use StructuredData Testing Tool. Also one call to get JSON with full HTTP response and then compare it with your result.

[KristinaKledzik]

You're probably already doing this, but make sure that all of your tests are using the Googlebot user agent! That could cause different results, especially with the robots.txt check.

A sense check: what is your plugin going to offer over Google Search Console's Fetch as Google and robots.txt Tester?

[boostaman]

Hello Peter,

First of all, thank you for the great ideas.

I don't think it's necessary to call the API, as this check references to only one URL (so no aggressiveness) , I need it to be done as fast as possible. But the idea with Structured Data - bravo!

Thanks a lot!

[boostaman]

Actually I'm not. That's why I'm asking, to not to miss this basic stuff, so I really appreciate your advice. Thank you!

If I get your question correctly, you are asking why this extension is need for?

Well, 2 main aims:

1. When I want to check any of pages on my own websites, I just visit the page and see if it's ok with all the robots stuff. (or if it should be closed from robots, see if it really is)

2. For linkbuilding purposes. When I come to the page and see a link from it to external website and I know for sure that I can get the same link to my site, I'm asking myself, if it worth getting link from the page like this, if it's gonna be indexed. Why waste your time on getting links from pages that are closed from indexation.

[KristinaKledzik]

Ah, gotcha. Personally, I use Google itself to find out if something is indexable: if it's my own site, I can use Fetch as Google, and the robots.txt tester; if it's another site, you can search for "site:[URL]" to see if Google's indexed it.

I think this tool could be really good if you keep it as an icon and it glows or something if you've accidentally deindexed the page? Then it's helping you proactively.

Hope this helps!

Kristina

[boostaman]

With "site:site.com" you can only see if the page is indexED, but to know if it's indexABLE you need to dig deeper. That is why I've decided to automate this process.

As I already told, this gonna be a browser extension, once you got on any page, this ext. automatically checks the page, and show the status (with color, I guess), if this page indexed, if not - it shows if its indexABLE. When I'm looking for linkbuilding resources, this little tool should help a lot

[KristinaKledzik]

I understand the difference between what you're doing and what Google shows, I guess I'm just not sure when I'd want to know that something could technically be indexed, but isn't?

I guess I'm not your target market! Good luck with your tool.