Start with the public response
Open the final URL signed out and confirm it returns the intended content with HTTP 200. A login screen, firewall challenge, redirect loop, 404, or 5xx response means crawlers may not see what your browser session sees.
Check robots and canonical signals
Review robots.txt, the robots meta tag, the X-Robots-Tag header, and the rendered canonical. A missing canonical is a recommendation gap, but a confirmed noindex or canonical to another destination requires attention.
Confirm discovery
Link the URL from a relevant crawlable page and include only its preferred canonical version in the XML sitemap. Avoid orphan pages and competing URL variants.
Submit after the signals agree
Once public access, directives, canonical, links, and sitemap agree, submit through the appropriate workflow. Use the complete indexability guide for deeper troubleshooting.