Previous Indexing States Metrics

In this article we'll discuss the previous indexing state metrics in the URL report.

The previous index state metrics are historic events tracked by our tool.

These previous indexing states track the following coverage states:

The previous indexing states can be found in the URL report > Previous indexing states.

The previous indexing states can be used to provide context to page URLs.

Google indexing data is lacking in providing context and does not give historic indexing data for any page URLs.

This is where Indexing Insight comes in.

Our scheduler automatically tracks when your page URLs change index coverage states and records the historic events for every URL.

This means we can use this data to help create unique reports in Indexing Insight.

It also means at any point, you can pull up a page URL and identify if the page has had a historic index coverage state. To help you understand if the page URL index coverage state is reversing.

The previous indexing states can be used in three ways:

You can use these groups of metrics to understand page quality.

If you suspect a page has a quality issue then you can use these metrics to understand if the index coverage states are reversing. Our research has identified that index coverage states indicate crawl priority and that Google can forget a page exists.

The index coverage states are ordered so that if you notice a page URL which has index coverage states with dates that are in sequence, it can indicate the page URL is being forgotten.

The previous indexing states can also indicate that a page URL is known to Google.

One of the most confusing index coverage states in Google Search Console is the 'URL is Unknown to Google' indexing state.

Our research has found that it doesn't mean Google has never seen the URL, instead it means that Google can over time forget a page URL even exists.

However, something interesting happens when the page URL is forgotten.

Googlebot can add the 'Unknown' page URL to its scheduler. When it does this the index coverage state can switch to 'Discovered - currently not indexed'. BUT it can switch back to 'URL is Unknown to Google' when the URL is not prioritised to be crawled.

This causes page URLs to jump between 'Unknown' to 'Discovered' index coverage states. Indicating the page is known to Google.

As a customer you can use the previous indexing state to understand if a 'URL is Unknown to Google' is ACTUALLY known to Google.

We even create custom reports to called "URL is Known to Google' to track those pages which are jumping between these two indexing states.

The previous indexing states can also be used to identify indexed pages that were historically Not Indexed due to quality issues.

At Indexing Insight we have grouped Not Indexed issues into three categories: Technical, Duplication and Quality.

Our research has identified that one of the biggest reasons that pages are Not Indexed is because of page quality issues.

The previous indexing states can help you identify if an indexed page was ever Not Indexed due to quality issues.