Review indexability with the GSC audit

Note: The GSC Audit is open to the team only for now, so it is not on your rail and opening it shows This area is being worked on. This guide describes what it does for the team accounts that have it.

The GSC Audit reads your Google Search Console data and produces an indexability review: which pages are indexed, which aren't, why, and what each problem costs you in traffic. Every finding names its evidence, and recommendations come ranked by impact so you fix the expensive problems first.

This version works from file uploads. You export your GSC reports and upload them; native Search Console OAuth is on the roadmap but not live yet.

Run it when impressions or clicks drop and you suspect indexing rather than rankings, after a site migration, or when Search Console shows a growing pile of pages under "Crawled - currently not indexed" and you want to know whether that matters.

Note that if you don't use Search Console at all, you should run the Technical SEO audit → instead — it finds crawl and indexability problems without needing GSC data.

Run the audit

To run a GSC audit:

1. In Google Search Console, open the Performance report and export it. CSV and Excel both work.
2. Optionally export Coverage (under Indexing → Pages) and Sitemaps the same way. More sources make the review sharper.
3. Go to Tools → GSC Audit, upload the files into their slots, and start the run.

Read the workbook

The workbook opens on an executive summary of at most five bullets, each tied to a traffic implication. Behind it:

• A root-cause table: Issue, status, URL pattern, how many pages are affected, the root cause, and the Google guideline it violates. Findings are labeled CONFIRMED (verified on the live page) or LIKELY (inferred from GSC signals alone) — the two never blend.
• A prioritized action plan: A status dropdown per row, impact and effort ratings, and owner and due-date columns so the sheet can run the fix project.
• A validation plan: How each fix gets re-verified after deploy.
• Findings are grouped into tabs — Indexing, Structured Data, Performance, Content — rather than one long sheet.

Indexing findings distinguish the buckets that look alike but mean different things: "Crawled - currently not indexed" isn't the same problem as "Discovered - currently not indexed", a duplicate/canonical choice, or an explicit noindex. Where the bucket can't be verified from exports alone, the sheet says so and points you at URL Inspection instead of guessing.

Limits and usage

• GSC data lags about 48 hours, so the audit excludes the most recent two days from any trend claim.
• GSC exports cap at 1,000 rows per report from the UI. The sheet states what share of your total clicks the analyzed rows cover, so a partial picture is labeled as one.
• Rate limited per account; a run takes up to 5 minutes.

If something isn't working

"Wrong file format" on upload. Export from GSC itself (the Export button, top right of each report). Screenshots and PDFs can't be parsed; CSV and Excel both work.

The review seems to miss pages you care about. The 1,000-row export cap is usually the cause — filter the Performance report to the section of the site you care about and export that instead.

A finding contradicts what you see in GSC today. Check the dates: the audit read your export, and GSC has moved since. Re-export and rerun.

Related guides

• Fix an audit that failed or came back empty
• Audit categories
• Build a post-revamp 301 redirect map — the companion tool when indexability broke during a migration.