"Is this page actually indexed?" is one of the most common questions on a client call. Most tools answer it with a stale guess. Crawl Cove answers it live, by calling Google's URL Inspection API for the exact URL you're looking at.
Note
What you'll need: Google Search Console connected for the client. See Connecting Search Console. No extra key beyond the GSC OAuth you already set up.
What it tells you
On the Pages / URL inspector, each crawled URL carries an Index status (Google) panel. Until you ask, it says "Not checked yet". When you request it, Crawl Cove calls Google's URL Inspection API for that exact URL and shows the live result:
- Coverage state, as the headline: Google's own description of what it did with the page, such as "Submitted and indexed", "Crawled - currently not indexed" or "Discovered - currently not indexed".
- Verdict: Google's overall PASS, NEUTRAL or FAIL.
- Robots.txt, Indexing and Page fetch: whether robots.txt allowed the fetch, whether indexing is allowed, and whether Googlebot could fetch the page at all.
- Last crawled: when Googlebot last fetched the page, or "Never" if it has not.
- Google canonical and Declared canonical, side by side. When they differ, the panel flags it: Google may be indexing a different URL from the one your page names.
The result is saved against the URL with the time it was checked, so you can read it again later without spending another inspection. Fetch it again only when you want a fresh answer.
Because it is a live call against your connected Search Console property, it reflects what
Google believes right now, not what a crawler inferred from a noindex tag or a
sitemap. That makes it the definitive answer when a client asks why a page is not showing
up.
Reading the coverage state
The headline is the part worth learning to read. The states you will meet most often, and what each one asks you to do:
- Submitted and indexed, or Indexed, not submitted in sitemap: the page is in the index. If it still earns no impressions, the problem is relevance or competition, not indexing. The second variant is a nudge to add the URL to your sitemap.
- Discovered - currently not indexed: Google knows the URL but has not fetched it yet. Usually a crawl-budget or internal-linking signal rather than a quality one. See what Discovered - currently not indexed means.
- Crawled - currently not indexed: Google fetched the page and chose not to index it. This one is about the page itself. See what Crawled - currently not indexed means.
- Duplicate without user-selected canonical, or Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user: Google treats the page as a copy of another URL. Check the two canonical rows in the panel first. See Duplicate without user-selected canonical.
- Excluded by noindex tag, Blocked by robots.txt, Not found (404): the crawl findings will already have told you about these. The inspection confirms Google saw the same thing.
The states that need the most explaining, and the fix for each, are in Search Console indexing issues explained.
Tip
Read Last crawled alongside the state. A page you fixed last week but Google last crawled a month ago still shows last month's verdict. Nothing has gone wrong; Google has not been back yet. How long Google takes to recrawl a page explains what to expect, and when a Request indexing press in Search Console is worth it.
Why it runs per URL, on request
Heads up
Google's URL Inspection API is quota-bound: 2,000 inspections per property per day, and 600 per minute (Google's documented limits, October 2026). Each Search Console property you connect has its own daily allowance. To respect that limit, Crawl Cove runs the check per URL, on request, rather than firing it for every page in a crawl. You ask for the URLs you care about; the quota lasts.
This is a deliberate design choice, not a limitation to apologise for. Site-wide live inspection would burn the daily quota in a single audit of a mid-sized site. Running it on demand means the quota is there when you need a definitive answer on the handful of pages a client is actually asking about: a striking-distance landing page, a new product URL, a page you just fixed.
If the quota does run out, the panel says so. Since Crawl Cove 1.3.3 the index-status and top-queries panels report a spent daily quota in plain words (the connection is fine, try again later) rather than a generic network error, and the app does not keep retrying against it. The results you fetched earlier stay readable, and Google resets the allowance daily.
A quota-friendly workflow
- Shortlist with the crawl. The deterministic crawl already knows which pages carry a
noindex, point their canonical elsewhere, redirect, or sit outside the sitemap. It checks every page in seconds and costs no quota. - Inspect the ones that matter. Spend inspections on the pages a client is asking about, the pages you have just fixed, and the ones the crawl flagged that should be indexed.
- Compare the canonical rows. A mismatch between Google's canonical and the declared one is the single most actionable thing this panel surfaces, and it is invisible to a crawler.
- Come back after the recrawl, not before. Note the Last crawled date, fix the page, and re-inspect once that date has moved. Until it does, the verdict cannot have changed.
Tip
Pair this with the deterministic crawl findings. The crawl tells you a page carries a
noindex directive or a bad canonical (instantly, for every page); the live URL
Inspection confirms what Google has done with it. Use the cheap deterministic signal to
shortlist, then spend an inspection to confirm.
Next
- Inspecting a URL: the Pages inspector that hosts the index status panel alongside CWV, findings, and query data.
- Connecting Search Console: the one-time setup that unlocks live index status and impact scoring.
- Search Console indexing issues explained: the coverage states that keep pages out of the index, and the fix for each.