Ahrefs Site Audit for indexability: good, with one blind spot

Ahrefs Site Audit for indexability: good, with one blind spot

Not an indexing tool per se, but its crawl flags the structural reasons pages don't index. I run it monthly.

What it does well:
— 'Indexability' health checks catch noindex, canonical loops, orphan pages and redirect chains in one report
— Orphan-page detection (crawl vs sitemap vs GSC) is genuinely strong
— Scheduled crawls let you spot regressions over time

Where it falls short:
— It reports what SHOULD be indexable, not what Google actually indexed — only GSC knows that
— It's a paid suite ($129/mo entry), overkill if indexing is your only concern
— JS rendering eats crawl credits fast

Pros: excellent structural diagnostics, orphan detection, trend tracking
Cons: not real index status, expensive for one job, JS-crawl cost

Best for: agencies auditing indexability at scale across clients.
NOT for: a solo blogger — GSC + a crawler covers you free.