Google’s John Mueller has mentioned that the new inspect URL tool in Search Console is primarily designed for use with webpages.
This clarification was offered to an SEO professional on Twitter who was worried about errors occurring when inspecting images, CSS, and JavaScript resources.
The inspect URL tool in Search Console generates results that reflect how Google would index a URL if it were a webpage.
As images, CSS, and JavaScript are not webpages, the inspect URL tool does not offer any beneficial information for them.
John Mueller stated: “The Inspect URL tool is only useful for webpages, so if you inspect images, CSS, JS, etc — then the results there wouldn’t be as useful (they’d reflect how we would index it if it were a web page, which they aren’t).”
For additional clarification, the SEO shared a screenshot displaying an error with an image URL known to be indexable.
Mueller responded by confirming that it’s acceptable since images are not indexed in standard web search results.
He noted: “Images aren’t indexed in web-search, so that would be fine.”
Although the updated inspect URL tool in Google Search Console has been available for less than a month, it might require some time to fully grasp its capabilities and limitations.
Concerns like this are expected to arise, and it’s reassuring to see Google representatives offering feedback.
