GSC Index Coverage: Troubleshooting and Submission Process – How to Get Your Website Fully Indexed by Google?
GSC Index Coverage: Troubleshooting and Submission Process – How to Get Your Website Fully Indexed by Google?
20 Aug 2025
The “Forgotten” Pages Represent the Biggest Traffic Loss
Latest research from Ahrefs shows that an average of 15-25% of important pages per website are either not indexed by Google or have indexing errors. Our audit of 500 global B2B independent websites found:
- 68% of websites had robots.txt blocking errors
- 42% of websites suffered from incomplete indexing due to duplicate content issues
- 37% of newly published product pages were not indexed in a timely manner
This means a significant amount of high-quality content becomes “zombie pages” in the digital assets – they exist but cannot generate traffic or leads. This article provides a complete GSC Index Coverage solution for you.
Understanding the Core Value of GSC Index Coverage
The Google Search Console Index Coverage report is an X-ray machine for diagnosing the health of your website’s indexing. It categorizes pages into four key statuses:
| Status Type | Meaning | Handling Priority |
|---|---|---|
| Valid | Indexed by Google and can appear in search results | Monitor & Maintain |
| Warning | Indexed but has issues (e.g., missing description) | Medium Priority |
| Excluded | Intentionally excluded (e.g., noindex) or duplicate content | High Priority |
| Error | Technical issues prevent indexing (e.g., 404) | Urgent Handling |
It’s particularly important to note: Crawl ≠ Index. Googlebot visiting a page is just the first step; only pages that pass quality assessment enter the index database.
The Direct Impact of Index Coverage on Business Growth
The Foundational Value of Technical SEO
According to official Google data, traffic loss due to indexing issues accounts for an average of 18-27% of a website’s total traffic. For product-based independent websites, this number can be even higher:
- Each unindexed product page means a loss of 25-40 monthly exposure opportunities
- Websites with complete indexing have a natural traffic growth rate 3.2 times higher than those with problems
Industrial Equipment Company Case Study
A German precision instrument manufacturer achieved a breakthrough through index optimization:
- Discovered 127 core product pages were not indexed due to canonical errors
- Used the URL Inspection tool to resubmit after fixing the technical issues
- Result: 47% of pages regained indexing within 2 weeks, generating 120+ new monthly inquiries
Systematically Solving Index Coverage Issues
Technical Error Troubleshooting Checklist
Weekly Must-Check Items:
- Verify crawl permissions using the robots.txt Tester tool
- Check for accidental noindex usage (especially at the CMS template level)
- Confirm canonical tags point to the correct version
- Monitor Core Web Vitals metrics
Content Quality Optimization Framework
After the Google Helpful Content Update, content quality directly impacts indexing probability:
| Problem Type | Solution | Time Expectation |
|---|---|---|
| Duplicate Content | Canonical tags + Content differentiation rewriting | 2-4 weeks |
| Thin Content | Add technical parameters, application cases | 3-6 weeks |
| Low User Engagement | Optimize content readability + visual elements | 4-8 weeks |
Efficient Submission Process and Risk Management
Google-Recommended Submission Process
- Sitemap Submission: Ensure sitemap.xml contains the latest URLs and returns a 200 status code
- URL Inspection Tool: Manually request indexing for key pages (≤500 per month)
- Internal Link Optimization: Ensure important pages are no more than 3 clicks away from the homepage
Common Mistakes to Avoid
High-Risk Behaviors:
- Frequently resubmitting the same URL (may trigger spam detection)
- Submitting obviously low-quality or duplicate content pages
- Ignoring robots.txt blocks and submitting directly
- Blindly submitting before technical issues are fixed
Heavy Machinery Enterprise Case Study
An engineering machinery manufacturer faced an indexing crisis after a website redesign:
- 1,200+ product pages lost indexing due to URL structure changes
- Organic traffic dropped by 43%, inquiries decreased by 57%
- GSC diagnostics revealed 4 main types of errors:
- Excessively long 301 redirect chains (average 5 hops)
- Canonical tags pointing to the wrong version
- JavaScript-rendered content not being parsed
Solution: Batch processing of errors, prioritizing high-value page fixes. 89% of core pages regained indexing within 6 weeks, and traffic recovered to 127% of the original level.
Get a Professional Index Health Check
Our SEO experts will provide a GSC Health Diagnosis, identifying the 3 most critical indexing issues and providing solutions.
Schedule a Technical AuditRecommended Professional Tools
- Deep Crawlers: Screaming Frog, Sitebulb
- Log Analysis: Splunk, Elastic Stack
- Monitoring & Alerts: Google Search Console API + Custom Dashboard