How To Use Google's URL Inspection Tool?

Google’s URL inspection tools can help brands identify and then fix any potential problems that might occur with their URL. This offers an excellent opportunity for organizations to maximize their potential on the SERP, as correcting any problems that Google sees can increase a site’s chances of ranking higher.

By inspecting your URLs, you can look at your web page from two main perspectives. One, you can investigate your current indexed URL. This refers to the web page as the search engine has indexed it. THe time it take for Google to read and index your site can vary so keep in mind the index might not reflect to the newest version of your site if you've made recent changes. Use a website inspector from Google to fix URL issues - BrightEdge

When you investigate the indexed version of your URL, you can learn valuable information such as:

  • Whether or not the URL is present on Google.
  • Your current index status, including valuable information such as the last time the URL was crawled and your canonical URL.
  • You can also learn about any ‘search enhancements’ that Google has detected on the page. Google says these enhancements include features such as your mobile usability, if there is an AMP version of the page, and what structured data/rich results appear on your page.

You will find this portion of the inspection tool helpful in a variety of situations. For example, it can help you if you want to know whether or not Google has indexed recent changes to your site, if you have any problems that have prevented Google from indexing your page, and if all of your search enhancements have been properly noted and recorded by Google.

You can also use the URL inspection tool to learn more about the live version of your web page. Running a live test asks Google to go and try to access your site for indexing. This test is designed only to allow you to confirm that your page is available for indexing. It does not help you actually get your page indexed.

Like when you test the indexed version of the URL, your live URL test will let you know about any search enhancements that the search engine detects on the page. Additionally, this particular inspection will let you know if any problems arise with Google being somehow blocked from accessing or indexing your site, allowing you to fix the problem immediately.

Other helpful features of Google's URL Inspection Tool

In addition to using these two inspection options, site owners can also use the URL inspection tool to get a glimpse of how Google renders their page. Particularly when you work with your site design, using this feature can allow you to verify that your site appears as you intended.

You can also request that Google re-index your page. Assuming your page was declared indexable during the live test, you can also submit your page to the indexing queue and the page should be reindexed within a week or two.

Google’s URL inspection tool offers a variety of helpful pieces of information. Site owners who want to make sure that their site is presented to Google and users the way they intended should regularly make use of this tool so that they can catch any errors early in the process and feel confident that thy know how Google perceives their site.