Why is Google Site:Query Not Showing All My Website Pages?.

If you are investing hundreds or thousands of dollars in content production each month, you’d want every single one of the content pieces you publish on your website to rank on Google, wouldn’t you?

But what if they aren’t?

For years have marketers been using the “site:websiteurl” query to learn whether their web pages are showing up on Google search engine or not. 

Let’s check whether every single one of our web pages is indexed or not. 

Checking Our Indexed Web Pages Count on Google

To do this, we’ll:

  • Hop onto Google
  • Type “site:www.redfoxvisual.com” in the Google search bar 
  • And here we go:

Why is Google Site:Query Not Showing All My Website Pages?

Look carefully, and you’ll observe 72 results.

Why is Google Site:Query Not Showing All My Website Pages?

But wait – we have more than 300 pages on our website. 

How’s that possible?

Why is Google site:query not showing all our indexed website pages?

Have the rest of the pages not been indexed? 

Let’s check on SEMRush – our favorite, go-to SEO tool.

Checking Our Indexed Web Pages Count on SEMRush

Here’s how you can check your indexed web pages count on SEMRush:

  • Hop onto SEMRush
  • Under SEO, select “Domain Overview.”
  • Why is Google Site:Query Not Showing All My Website Pages?
  • Keep scrolling until you see the “Indexed Pages” section.
  • Why is Google Site:Query Not Showing All My Website Pages?

 

  • Select “View Details” to dive in deeper. And here we go:
  • Why is Google Site:Query Not Showing All My Website Pages?
    6 (1)

As you can see, we have 398 pages indexed on our website (as of this writing – we have an outstanding content marketing team – so the indexed pages count will be a lot higher by the time you’re reading this blog post).

So, the question is – what’s the reason behind this huge difference between Google (72) & SEMRush (398)?

Don’t worry – we have the answers. Let’s have a look.

Why is Google ‘Site:’ Query Not Showing Up All My Website Pages?

What if I told you that the Google “site:www.redfoxvisual.com” query isn’t supposed to fetch and display all our indexed web pages? 

Yup – that’s right.

Recently, Google’s John Muller explained in one of #AskGoogleBot YouTube series videos that Google site:query results are not a comprehensive collection of all indexed pages of a website.

As stated by him, “site:query is not meant to be complete nor used for diagnostic purposes. The Google site:query is a specific type of search that limits the results to a certain website. It is not supposed to be a complete or comprehensive collection of all of the pages from the website.”

So, if you have over 200 pages yet Google site:query fetches only 60 results, there’s no need to worry. It’s perfectly normal. 

You don’t need to be concerned.

How to Check Whether Your Web Pages are Indexed or Not?

To learn whether your web pages are indexed or not, we’d advise you to go with one of the following approaches:

  • Use Google Search Console
  • Check One Page at a Time
  • Use an SEO Tool Like SEMRush or Ahrefs

Use Google Search Console

Our expert Mary likes to call it a “Guarantee – for sure testing to check whether your web pages are indexed.”

As a Google Search Console user, you can easily fetch an accurate indexing report from “Google Search Console -> Index -> Coverage.”

Here you can see the number of pages that are:

  • Error: Not indexed
  • Valid with warnings: Indexed yet have problems
  • Valid: Indexed
  • Excluded: Not indexed – because you asked Google not to. For example, pages with no index tags in robot.txt or canonical or meta tags.

Here’s what a Coverage Report looks like:

Why is Google Site:Query Not Showing All My Website Pages?

Bonus Note: If you don’t see your URL in the coverage report – which BTW backloads up to 10 days or longer if there is an error), you can just put it in the search bar.

Check One Page at a Time

While this may require you to spend too much time and effort, you can check whether your web pages are indexed or not one at a time. Here’s how:

  • Hop onto Google.
  • Type “cache:websitepageurl” in the Google search bar and hit search. For example, if we want to check whether our landing page is indexed or not, we will type in “cache:www.redfoxvisual.com” and hit search.
  • Why is Google Site:Query Not Showing All My Website Pages?

Why is Google Site:Query Not Showing All My Website Pages?

Why is Google Site:Query Not Showing All My Website Pages?

Hurrah! It’s indexed. 

But the one BIG problem with this approach is that you’ll have to do the same for every single page on your website. 

Let’s have a look at the third one.

Use an SEO Tool Like SEMRush or Ahrefs

You can check whether your web pages are indexed or not by using well-known and popular SEO tools like SEMRush or Ahrefs. In the above section, we learned how to check our indexed pages on SEMRush. 

Let’s do a quick recap:

  • Log in to SEMRush.
  • Under SEO, select “Domain Overview.”

Why is Google Site:Query Not Showing All My Website Pages?

  • Type your website URL and hit Search. This time, let’s check for one of our clients “Shadeworks.”
    Website URL: www.shadeworks.com 

Why is Google Site:Query Not Showing All My Website Pages?

  • Keep scrolling until you see the “Indexed Pages” section.

Why is Google Site:Query Not Showing All My Website Pages?

  • Select “View Details” to look at all the indexed pages:

Why is Google Site:Query Not Showing All My Website Pages?

As simple as that!

Learn Whether Your Web Pages are Indexed or Not!

We’ve seen clients invest thousands of dollars in blog posts, articles, press releases, case studies, new website pages, only to later know that no single one of their web pages got indexed.

And trust on this one – if your web pages are not getting indexed, you’re probably wasting your top dollars. 

So – it’s advisable to fetch a detailed report from Google Search Console or SEO tools like SEMRush or Ahrefs.

And stop worrying if Google site:query is not fetching all of your web pages. That’s because it’s not supposed to. 

A special thanks to our SEO experts for helping us produce this blog post. And if you want them to level up your SEO efforts, feel free to reach out to the #1 SEO agency in Idaho.

Request a free proposal today!

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