This article explains the 'processing' indexing state for page URLs.
In this article we will go through:
What is the URL state 'pending'?
When will page URLs be inspected?
Where can you find page URLs with 'pending' state?
What is the URL state 'pending'?
The 'pending' indexing state means we have not yet inspected the page URL.
For every new monitoring project all of the inspection page URLs will be added to a queue to be inspected before it can be given an indexing state.
A page URL will always have the following indexing states:
Indexing State | Description | Inspected? |
Pending | The page URL is waiting to be inspected | 🔴 No |
Indexed | The page URL is eligible to appear in Google Search results. | 🟢 Yes |
Not Indexed | The page URL is not eligible to appear in Google Search results. | 🟢 Yes |
Once a page has been inspected using the URL Inspection API it no longer has the indexing state 'pending'.
When a project has all it's page URLs inspected the pending indexing state will be zero.
When will page URLs be inspected?
You can see the est. time it takes to inspect all your page URLs is in Web Properties.
The time it takes to inspect all the pages is called the Inspection Cycle. This is the maximum number of days to inspect all the pages that are being monitored on the website.
But what if you want to know how long it will take for specific website section?
No problem.
The web properties page also provides a breakdown of the number of days it takes to inspect your pages for each specific web property.
So you can get an estimate of how long it will take your pending page URL to have its indexing state.
Where can you find page URLs with 'pending' state?
You can find page URLs with the 'pending' indexing state in the Index Coverage report.
All the page URLs being monitored (including pending) can be downloaded from the report. So, you can see which page URLs have not been inspected.