According to the report by Google, it has made 4 major changes in the Google Search Console index coverage report. The Google Search Console Update is said to be done to solve the indexing issues some site owners had faced. The index coverage report was included in Google Search Console in 2018. The site owners shared their experience with this report and since its inception in search console, they wanted that Google should implement some changes in the future in the Google Search Console index coverage report.
What is the index coverage report?
The Google Search Console index coverage report shows the state of indexing of all the URLs in your property visited or tried to visit Google.
Google announced that it is carrying out Google Search Console Update, in its index coverage report owing to the feedback it has received from the webmasters and site owners. Site owners have cited some issues, so in order to keep them better updated on those issues, Google is executing changes. The changes are directed towards offering a better state to the issues webmasters are facing.
Following are the Google Search Console New Features/Changes in the Search Console Index Coverage Report:
Google Search Console has undergone four major changes in its indexing report, which are as follows:
- Crawl Anomaly Issue Removed:
The generic “crawl anomaly” issue type has been removed. Now all the crawl errors will be mapped with a finer resolution and specific issues.
- Google Search Console 404 Reporting:
Google Search Console 404 reporting is updated to be more accurate and error-free.
- From “Submitted but Blocked” to “Indeed but Blocked”:
Before this update, the submitted pages that were blocked by robots.txt and still got indexed were reported as error of “submitted but blocked”. This has now been changed and these pages will now be shown as a warning as error of “indexed but blocked”. This will allow the site owners to be certain about the pages which are blocked but indexed by Google. From now onwards, the report will reflect the difference between submitting a URL and having it indexed.
- Google Search Console New Features of “Indexed without Content”:
A new issue is also added as a warning in the Google Search Console index coverage report named “indexed without content”. Previously, Google could not read the content on the webpage, but somehow these pages appear in the Google index. This could be due to reasons like the webpage is either cloaked or the page is in a format that Google can’t read.
So this kind of issue can’t be reported under any other error, therefore Google added “indexed without content” to Google Search Console index coverage report. In case you see the “indexed without content”, it just means that the webpage URL exists in Google index but web crawlers couldn’t view the content.
These changes have been incorporated in the Google Search Console index coverage report. Google Search Console New Features will assist the site owners to be better informed on some issues they have been facing in the past.
