In this article, we’ll explain the components of the Index Coverage report.
What is the Index Fluctuation report?
The Index Fluctuation report helps teams identify pages which are "fluctuating" between 'submitted and indexed' and 'crawled - previously indexed'.
Why track Index Fluctuations?
Indexed pages are actively deindexed due to a page's Quality (Q*) score.
When an indexed page is actively removed its index coverage state changes from 'submitted and indexed' to 'crawled - currently not indexed'.
Indexing Insight marks these pages as 'crawled - previously indexed'.
This process happens because (we believe) that Google uses a Quality (Q*) threshold score to manage which pages are Indexed and Not Indexed.
A page's quality score isn't fixed but changes based on signals picked up over time.
Pages which are close to the quality threshold are susceptible to fluctuating between being 'Indexed' and 'Not Indexed'.
This fluctuation can cause pages we track to jump between 'submitted and indexed' to 'crawled - previously indexed'.
And it's this fluctuation that we track in the Index Fluctuation report.
What you are looking at in the report is a list of pages which are on the quality threshold within Google's Search index.
A few improvements could help push them to be indexed over the long term.
How does the Index Fluctuation report work?
This article is broken down into the following parts:
Main Navigation
Segmentation
90-day chart
Data table filter
Data table
1) Index Fluctuations: Main Navigation
The report can be found in the INDEXING section within the main navigation.
2) Index Fluctuations: Segment Filter
The segment filter utilises web properties to filter your indexing data based on the folder structure.
To use the segment filter, simply click on the component, and you will see a list of web properties with the number of URLs grouped within each web property. The web properties are sorted from largest to smallest.
Select a web property on which you want to segment your indexing data.
When you select a web property, the data in the app will filter to contain URLs within that web property.
This means that the chart, data table and all reports in the app will only contain the URLs within the web property you selected. So, you can focus on analysing and spotting trends in the key areas of the website.
3) Index Fluctuations: 90-day chart
The 90-day chart shows you the total number of indexed and not indexed pages.
You can use the chart to identify trends for your important pages and different site sections on your website.
4) Index Fluctuations: Data Table Filter
The data table filter can be used to filter the indexing data in the data table.
The data table filter allows you to filter on:
Page URL
Indexing status
Canonical
New Pages Detected
Indexing State Change
When you apply a filter, it updates the data table in the report. You can apply multiple filters to be as specific as you want.
5) Index Fluctuations: Data Table
The data table contains all the pages which meet the following criteria:
Number of Indexing Changes of 2 or more.
Inspected pages with a Index Status equals 'Submitted and Indexed'.
Inspected pages with a Index Status equals 'Crawled - Previously Indexed'.
The data table contains the following data:
Page URL - The page URL of the inspected page.
Indexed - Whether the page was indexed or not indexed.
Index Status - The indexing state of a page from the URL inspection API.
Number of Indexing Changes - The number of times a page changes from a indexed to a not indexed verdict.
The data table is sorted by default to show the pages with the most number of indexing changes.
