If a page is not indexed, it cannot rank, cannot earn impressions, and cannot earn clicks. A drop in this count is pages quietly vanishing from Google, and it almost always traces back to a deploy.
At a glance
Indexed Pages is the count of URLs Google reports as indexed for the connected Search Console property. It is the foundation metric for organic visibility: every impression, click and ranking depends on the page being in the index first. A fall here is a de-indexing event and is one of the highest-signal early warnings in the whole connector, because the usual cause is a robots.txt, canonical, or noindex regression shipped in a recent deploy. The card compares the current count against the prior period (30D vsP) and alerts on any fall of more than 5%.
| What it tracks | The number of URLs reported as indexed by Search Console, sourced from URL-inspection and the Index → Pages (Coverage) report. A page is indexed when Google has crawled it, decided to keep it, and made it eligible to appear in results. |
| Data source | Google Search Console: the Index → Pages report (“Indexed” total) and the URL Inspection API for per-URL verification. Vortex IQ tracks the indexed total and the period-over-period change. |
| Time window | 30D vsP. The current indexed count is compared against the count from the prior comparable period. |
| Alert trigger | drop >5% vsP (de-indexing event). Sentiment key tied to the indexed-pages count. A 5% floor is deliberately tight: indexing is normally stable day to day, so even a modest fall is worth investigating. |
| Why 5% and not 20%? | Unlike impressions, the indexed-page count barely moves under normal conditions. A healthy site adds or loses a handful of pages as content ships. A 5% step is therefore already abnormal and usually means a systematic exclusion, not organic churn. |
| What a drop usually means | In order of frequency: a Disallow added to robots.txt, a noindex tag shipped site-wide or to a template, a canonical pointing the wrong way, a redirect or 404 regression, or a nofollow/blocked rendering path. Almost always a deploy artefact. |
| Data freshness | The Pages report updates on Google’s own crawl-and-process cadence, which can lag days behind a change. A drop you see today may reflect a deploy from earlier in the week. |
| Roles | owner, marketing |
Calculation
The card reads the Indexed total from the Search Console Index Coverage data for the property, the same headline number shown at the top of the Index → Pages report (“Pages indexed”). Where per-URL confirmation is needed, Vortex IQ uses the URL Inspection API, which returns thecoverageState for an individual URL (for example Submitted and indexed, Crawled - currently not indexed, Excluded by 'noindex' tag).
The metric is a point-in-time count, not a sum over a period. The trend and alert come from comparing today’s indexed count against the count from the prior comparable period:
change% is a fall of more than 5%, the card raises a sensitivity flag and feeds the Index-Coverage-Drop Alert, which watches the same number in real time against a 7-day baseline. Because Google’s Pages report does not expose a clean daily series through the public API the way Search Analytics does, the count reflects Google’s latest processed snapshot rather than a precise calendar day. See the worked example for how to read a real drop.
Worked example
A UK supplements retailer on BigCommerce, domain propertysc-domain:gltc.co.uk. The catalogue and content together hold roughly 4,200 indexable URLs.
| Snapshot | Date | Indexed pages | vs prior | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prior | 02 Jun 26 | 4,180 | baseline | Healthy |
| Current | 09 Jun 26 | 3,760 | down 10.0% | Alert: de-indexing event |
- The alert cleared the 5% floor at 10%, so it fired. 420 URLs had left the index inside a week. The card flagged amber and the Index-Coverage-Drop Alert raised a real-time incident.
- The shape pointed at a template, not at content. 420 lost pages is far too many to be organic churn. Pulling the Index → Pages report and reading the “Why pages aren’t indexed” table showed a spike in Excluded by ‘noindex’ tag, all on
/blog/*URLs. The brand had shipped a CMS theme update on 03 Jun 26 that added<meta name="robots" content="noindex">to the blog post template. - Confirming the root cause with URL Inspection. Running the URL Inspection API on three sample blog URLs returned
coverageState: "Excluded by 'noindex' tag"for each, with the liverobotsdirective showingnoindex. That tied the drop precisely to the template, not to a robots.txt change or a wider algorithm event. - The downstream impact landed within days. Impressions Trend started sloping down 48 hours after the deploy as the de-indexed posts stopped appearing in results, and Clicks Trend followed. Catching the de-index first meant the fix (removing the stray noindex and requesting re-validation) shipped before the click loss compounded.
Sibling cards to read alongside
| Card | Why pair it with Indexed Pages |
|---|---|
| Pages Not Indexed | The mirror image. When indexed falls, this rises; its reasons breakdown names why (noindex, canonical, soft 404, duplicate). |
| Index Coverage Trend | The 90-day shape of the same number. Use it to tell a one-off deploy drop from a slow indexing decline. |
| Index-Coverage-Drop Alert | The real-time companion that pages the on-call when this count falls more than 5% versus a 7-day baseline. |
| Sitemap Status | A broken or stale sitemap stops Google discovering pages, a common upstream cause of falling indexed counts. |
| Sitemap-Errors Alert | Fires when a submitted sitemap errors, the first place a content-launch failure shows up before indexing reacts. |
| Impressions Trend | The downstream effect. De-indexed pages stop earning impressions within days. |
| Total Pages Indexed | The page-performance view of the indexed total for cross-checking. |
Reconciling against the source
Where to look in Google Search Console:Index → Pages (formerly Coverage). The headline “Indexed” count at the top of that report is the reference number for this card. The “Why pages aren’t indexed” table beneath it lists each exclusion reason with a URL count, which is the fastest way to attribute a drop.For a single URL, use URL Inspection (the search bar at the top of Search Console, or the URL Inspection API). It reports the live
coverageState and whether the page is on Google.
Why our number may legitimately differ from the Search Console UI or API:
| Reason | Direction | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Processing lag. The Pages report reflects Google’s latest crawl-and-process snapshot, which can trail a deploy by days. | Both may lag the live site | Compare snapshots a few days apart, not minute to minute. |
| Snapshot timing. This card and the UI may sample on slightly different cadences, so counts can be off by a small margin between refreshes. | Marginal | Treat single-digit gaps as timing, not error. |
| Domain vs URL-prefix property. A domain property counts every subdomain and protocol; a URL-prefix property counts only its exact prefix. | Domain property higher | Confirm both sides read the same property. |
| What counts as “indexed”. The UI’s Indexed total excludes alternates, canonicalised duplicates, and noindex pages by design. | UI may look lower than a raw URL list | Use the UI’s Indexed figure as the definition, not your sitemap size. |
| Inspection vs report. A live URL Inspection (“Test live URL”) can show a different state from the indexed snapshot, because live testing reflects the page as it is right now, not as last processed. | Variable | Use indexed-state, not live-test, for reconciliation. |