Google has released a ** that provides three tips for using the search console to identify technical issues that may be causing indexing or ranking issues.
Google's three tips for solving technical problems are:
Check if the page is indexed or indexable.
Check if there is a duplicate page or if another page is canonical.
Check the rendered HTML for issues related to **.
A common problem that is easy to overlook but needs to be checked is whether URLs can be indexed or not.
The Google Search Console URL checker tool is great for solving the problem of whether Google has indexed a page. The tool will tell you if the page is indexed and if it is indexable. If it's not indexable, it provides a suggestion as to why Google might not be able to index it.
Another data point provided by the URL is the last crawl date, which gives you an idea of how interested Google is in the page.
That said, if the page doesn't change often, then Googlebot may decide to crawl it less. It's not a big deal. This makes a lot of sense in terms of saving resources for both Google and the target web server.
Finally, a URL checker tool can be used to request a crawl.
Google next recommends checking if one page is duplicated or another is canonical.
This indicates that if you choose another page as the canonical page, you're usually fine.
It explains:
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"The next thing to check after crawling is if it's ignored as a duplicate and the canonical URL is on another URL in most cases, which is no problem.Bonus tip: Google warns against using the cache or site:search operator for any type of diagnostic purpose. For example, a page can be indexed, but it won't appear in site:search.Even though this may not be the canonical URL you're expecting, the content will be indexed and be able to show up in search results, so that's usually fine. ”
The site search operator, like all other site operators, is completely independent of the search index. This has always been the case, even if there is a **search operator for displaying backlinks.
Google Suggestion:
"Don't use caching or site search operators and features, as they are not suitable for debugging purposes and may give you misleading results when trying to debug with them. ”The last tip is very good. Google recommends that inspecting HTML via source is not the same as inspecting rendered HTML.
Rendering refers to the HTML that is generated for the browser or Googlebot to generate a web page.
If you want to figure out if there's something wrong with the HTML, then it's useful to check the rendered HTML, as this will show you what the browser and Googlebot actually see at the ** level.
The difference between source HTML and rendered HTML is that the rendered variant shows you what the HTML looks like after all j**ascript is executed.
So, if there's an issue with j**ascript or something else, you're more likely to spot it by looking at the rendered html.
Google Suggestion:
“……Inspect the rendered HTML and HTTP responses to see if there's anything you didn't expect.Use Search Console to view the rendered HTMLFor example, spurious error messages or missing content due to some technical issue in the server or application. ”
Google support provides step-by-step instructions for viewing the rendered HTML in the Search Console:
Check URLs by entering URLs directly in the URL checker tool or by clicking the check link next to the URLs that appear in most Search Console reports.
Click the test live URL > to view the test page.
The HTML tab displays the HTML rendered by the page. ”
Use Chrome DevTools to view the rendered HTML
Chrome DevTools (in the Chrome browser) can also be used to view rendered HTML.
Open Chrome Dev Tools via the vertical ellipsis (three dots) drop-down menu, then:
More Tools > Developer Tools.
Then, for macOS, press Command+Shift+P;For Windows Linux ChromeOS, press Control+Shift+P to access the command menu.
Type: Rendering, select the menu option "Show Rendering".
After that, Chrome DevTools shows you the rendered HTML in the bottom window, which can be grabbed and enlarged with the mouse cursor as shown in the screenshot below.
There are many technical issues that can get in the way of indexing and ranking, and there are even more ways to identify and resolve them.
Luckily, Google makes it easy to debug technical issues using the tools provided by Search Console and Chrome DevTools.