On your Spectora website, you may occasionally see an error message like "Google has trouble indexing my site."
This sounds super scary, but most of the time, it's a minor issue that doesn't require any action! Sometimes this happens because the Google bot is trying to index URLs that are not meant to be indexed, such as back-end links, images, redirects, etc. The most important is to check if all canonical web pages were indexed properly. You can find the list of all indexed pages by clicking "View data about indexed pages".
Types of Common Indexing Issues
Not Found (404)
A "Not Found (404)" means that the web page or file you are trying to access is not available on the server.
This error often occurs when the URL or path entered in the browser is incorrect, or the requested page has been moved or deleted.
Discovered/Crawled - currently not indexed
Sometimes Google crawls the page but has yet to index it. In most scenarios, the indexing will follow soon after.
No action is required!
Excluded by ‘noindex’ tag
The URL was intentionally excluded from indexing, as it was not meant to be indexed. No action is required here!
Blocked due to access forbidden (403)
There are cases where Google tried to index URLs with restricted access (for example, back-links that require login credentials).
Those pages naturally won't be indexed in search results anyway, therefore, no action is usually needed on your end.
However, if you want those pages to be discoverable on the open web, you might consider making them publicly accessible without requiring logins (or ask us to check it out!).
What To Do When Indexing Errors Occur
Some indexing issues are false positives, meaning Google is flagging a page that doesn't need to be indexed in the first place. These typically resolve themselves!
Google can take up to two weeks for indexing to update, but in most cases, it's only a few days.
If you're not sure about the indexing issues on your site, please follow these instructions to provide us access to your Google Search Console. You'll need to make domains@spectora.com a manager under your Google Console account.
Once you've followed those instructions, you can reach out via our chat bubble or email websites@spectora.com!
Spectora builds high-quality home inspection websites with an out-of-the-box SEO setup.
