Pages not showing up is usually a crawl problem, not a content problem
Almost none of my pages appear in search results. I assumed I needed more content — is that right?
Which checks surface this
- robots-blocks-important — robots rules that block paths you clearly want indexed
- robots-unreachable — a robots file that returns an error, leaving the rules unknown
- sitemap-coverage — a sitemap that does not list pages that should be discoverable
- orphan-pages — pages with no internal links pointing at them
- deep-pages — pages that sit so many clicks from the homepage they are rarely reached
Check ids: robots-blocks-important · robots-unreachable · sitemap-coverage · orphan-pages · deep-pages
A concrete example
A Disallow rule written years ago for a test folder can block a section you moved there later. The pages still load fine in a browser, so nothing looks broken.
FAQ
- How do I check this without Search Console?
- A crawl of the site shows which pages are reachable and which are blocked, plus whether each page is linked from somewhere. That covers the four causes above.
- Should I just publish more pages meanwhile?
- It will not help the existing pages. If crawling is blocked, new pages inherit the same problem.