In this article we explain the 'URL is Known to Google' report.
What is 'URL is Known to Google'?
The 'URL is Known to Google' index coverage state is a unique report AND index coverage state in Indexing Insight.
How is 'URL is Known to Google' calculated?
The index coverage state is calculated based on previous indexing state metrics.
Pages with the 'URL is Known to Google' index coverage state represent pages which have the 'URL is Unknown to Google' state BUT have recorded previous indexing states.
For example, a URL with a 'URL is Unknown to Google' coverage state can be relabelled as 'URL is Known to Google' if its historic metric shows 'Discovered - currently not indexed'.
How to use the 'URL is Known to Google' report
The 'URL is Known to Google' report can be used in three ways:
Identify unknown vs known page URLs
Identify actively forgotten page URLs
Identify newly discovered page URLs
1) Identify unknown vs known page URLs
The 'URL is Known to Google' report can help you identify pages that have never been seen vs historically crawled pages that are being forgotten.
The key problem with the 'URL is Unknown to Google' coverage state is that it groups both 'unknown' and 'known' page URLs together.
It doesn't matter if Google has crawled and indexed the page historically, after 190-days of not being crawled they all get put in the 'URL in Unknown to Google'.
Our tool helps you understand the difference between page URLs that have been seen by Google (Known) vs actual pages never discovered, crawled or indexed by Google.
2) Identify actively forgotten page URLs
The URL is Known to Google can identify page URLs that have been actively forgotten by Google.
The URL is Known to Google report helps identify pages that have index coverage states that are reversing and being forgotten by Google.
3) Identify discovered page URLs
The URL is Known to Google can help uncover if newly published page URLs are scheduled to be crawled.
When a page URL's index coverage state jumps between the 'Unknown' and 'Discovered' coverage states it indicates that Googlebot has scheduled 'Known' pages to be crawled.
You can use this report to understand if Google has scheduled brand new page URLs to be crawled. Rather than 'Unknown' page status in Google Search Console.