Index Coverage

Index coverage refers to the status of a site's URLs within Google's index — specifically, which pages are indexed, which are excluded, and why. Google Search Console's Index Coverage report (now part of the Indexing section) categorizes URLs into "Valid," "Valid with warnings," "Excluded," and "Error" states, providing reasons for each classification. Understanding index coverage is essential for diagnosing why certain pages are not appearing in search results.

Common index coverage issues include pages blocked by robots.txt (Google can't crawl them), noindex directives, duplicate content handled by canonicalization, soft 404s, crawl anomalies, and pages discovered but not yet indexed due to low priority. Regularly auditing index coverage ensures that the pages you want indexed are included and low-value pages are properly excluded.