Google launches new “URL inspection” tool for webmasters

Google has finally allowed its Google Search Console users to check when Google bots last crawled any URL.

It was one of the most commonly requested new features, and Google has finally answered with a new “URL inspection” tool.

The new URL inspection tool can be found in the Google Search Console, and it will users detailed crawling, indexing, and serving information regarding web pages. The information would be pulled directly from Google Index.

Here is what Google said when it announced the new URL inspection tool:

”One of our most common user requests in Search Console is for more details on how Google Search sees a specific URL. We listened, and today we’ve started launching a new tool, ‘URL inspection’ to provide these details, so Search becomes more transparent.”

The following screenshot shows how the URL inspection tool looks and works in the Google Search Console.

As you can see in the above screenshot, when logged into your Google Search Console account, you can enter a URL in the URL inspection tool to learn the last crawl date and status. The tool will also highlight any indexing or crawling errors as well as the canonical URL for that page.

If a URL is successfully indexed, you will also see other enhancements, e.g., AMP version, rich results, etc. On the other hand, if a URL is not indexed, the URL inspection tool will tell you why.

Google has started rolling the new URL inspection tool; it will be available to all users in the next few weeks.