Bulk URL Inspection in Search Console: Forty Pages in One Table

You published a batch of new pages. Which ones did Google take, and which did it ignore? Search Console has a URL inspection box, but it takes one address at a time. Pasting forty URLs one by one is nobody's idea of work, so nobody does it, and pages that never got indexed sit unnoticed for months.

Bulk URL inspection closes that gap. You hand over a list of addresses and get what Google knows about each one in a single table.

What an inspection tells you

The information per URL is the same as the inspection box in the interface.

• Indexing status. Whether the page is indexed, and if not, why.
• Last crawl time. When Google last looked at it.
• Google-selected canonical. The canonical you declared and the one Google picked can differ, and that is one of the sneakiest problems in SEO.
• Discovery path. Whether it was found through the sitemap or an internal link.
• Robots and crawl permission. If something is blocking the page, it shows here.

For a single URL these are interesting facts. Across forty they form a pattern, and the pattern tells you where the problem actually is.

When to run a bulk inspection

After publishing. A week after shipping a batch of pages, inspect all of them. Anything missing from the index shows up early instead of three months later.

After a migration. If the domain or URL structure changed, inspect old and new addresses together. This is where you catch Google still treating the old URL as canonical.

During a traffic drop. If one section lost traffic, inspect that section's URLs in bulk. There is usually a shared cause: a wrong canonical, an accidental block, or pages that were never crawled at all.

To validate a sitemap. Comparing the URLs in your sitemap against what is actually indexed tells you whether the sitemap is doing its job.

Canonical mismatch, the biggest time sink

Your page declares itself as canonical, but Google picked a different address. The page still looks indexed while its ranking signals flow somewhere else, and you are left wondering why it will not rank.

Common causes: the same content published at two addresses, language versions pointing at each other, and both the trailing slash and non-slash versions being reachable.

In a bulk inspection this is obvious at a glance. Where the declared canonical column differs from the selected one, look at that row.

Quota and practical limits

Inspection is not free, it runs inside a daily quota, and the quota is per property. Inspecting the whole site every day makes no sense. The right use is selective: newly published pages, a section you suspect, or a slice of the sitemap.

Timing matters too. An inspection reflects what Google knows right now. Inspecting a page on the day you published it and getting "not found" is expected, not a problem. Wait a few days and check again.

What to do with the results

Once the table lands, the work begins. In practice three buckets form.

1. Indexed and healthy. Leave it alone.
2. Crawled but not indexed. Usually a content quality issue or overlap with similar pages. Strengthen the content or consolidate the pages.
3. Never discovered. Missing internal links is the usual cause. Link to the page from your site and make sure it is in the sitemap.

The third bucket is the easiest win available. A page Google has never seen cannot rank no matter how good it is.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does bulk inspection speed up indexing?

Inspection is a read operation and does not push a page into the index. It shows you the problem; fixing it is still your job.

How many URLs can I inspect?

The daily quota applies per property, so instead of sweeping the whole site every day, focus on newly published pages and sections you suspect.

A page returns "not found", is that a problem?

For a freshly published page it is normal, Google simply has not discovered it yet. If it still says the same a few days later, check internal links and the sitemap.

Why do the declared and selected canonicals differ?

The same content being reachable at more than one address is the most common reason. Google decides which one it treats as the original, and your tag is a suggestion rather than an instruction.