Google Search Console Indexed Pages Problem, Plus Workaround

Google's Gary Illyes announced today there's a problem in Search Console that's affecting the reporting of indexed pages.

2/ Bad news: we might have a problem with reporting the number of indexed URLs in the SC Sitemaps feature. Good news: we're looking into it

— Gary Illyes (@methode) August 20, 2015

For some websites, Search Console is erroneously reporting huge drops in the number of indexed pages. Some are seeing huge spike in the number of indexed pages, and for others indexed pages are staying flat where there have actually been increases.

If you have looked up your indexed pages in Search Console lately and thought something looked wrong, chances are you're affected by this problem.

The good news is, I have a simple workaround for you that I discovered while tracking some of the sites I prepare reports for each month.

I have seen it where Search Console was reporting zero indexed pages for a site, when that was obviously not the case at all because they were receiving organic traffic.

This is what I did to get an accurate report of indexed pages.

Until this problem with Search Console is fixed, here's what you can do to see how many indexed pages you have.

Simply type site:your-domain.com into the search bar and see how many pages Google finds.

Here's an example:

That number you see up there, in this case 21,400, is the true number of indexed pages.

I have found this to be the best workaround for sites where there was clearly a reporting error in Search Console.

Until Google fixes the problem in Search Console, this is your best bet to see how many pages of your site are in Google's index at a given time.

Editorial Credit: Shutterstock

Screenshot taken by author on 8/20/15

Source: Google Search Console Indexed Pages Problem, Plus Workaround