Search Console has a button called Confirm Fix that tells Google that you fixed the indexing problem. In a recent episode of Search Off the Record, Google’s John Mueller explained what clicks do, and where they are best used.
What ‘Confirm Repair’ does
If you click on any problem in the search console, “Verification Repair” is one of the first things you will see. It appears prominently at the top of the page, which is part of why people use it more than they should.
When you ask Google to verify a “404 not found” issue, it first checks a sample of URLs affected by that issue. If the problem still occurs on any of those pages, verification stops. If the sample comes back clean, Search Console queues up all affected URLs for redrawing, not your entire site.
Mueller explained what you’re buying:
So the way it gets marked as fixed is we try to sample the pages that you tell us are fixed. And if we see that it’s not really fixed, then in most cases, we’ll trigger a refresh on other pages.
Clicking on the confirmation fix takes the crawl forward, Mueller continues:
“It’s not so much that we’re going to wait and see if this actually works better, but we’re going to try to crawl that quickly.”
The button is simply a way to request a quick process; no update required. If you choose to skip it, Google will still see your edits during its normal browsing time.
Why Think You’ve Got It All Done
Validation is linked to a specific issue, so it assumes you’ve fixed all instances of that issue, not just one page. If you click the button and there are a few problems left, the test will not pass. This button is best used if you’ve fixed all pages that show this error, not just one URL. For fixing a single URL, the URL Checker tool and the indexing request are the most suitable options.
On a large site, you can verify quickly by filtering the report on the sitemap for your most important pages first, then request verification from that subset. A subset cleans up faster than one that includes all affected URLs on a site.
When the Button Gets Clicked
The server or CDN may start returning 404 or 403 errors to Googlebot, especially if bot protection is triggered during heavy crawling, causing the original pages to be de-indexed.
Mueller highlighted this as a good use of the retrial button. After fixing the problem, the pages still exist but are recorded as errors by Google, and using the button prompts Google to recheck them. This is very important for speeding up the recovery of many accidentally dropped pages. Conversely, if the deleted section now returns 404 errors, this indicates correct behavior, and no validation is required.
Why This Matters
The button is located at the top of each page, above the list of flagged URLs. It’s designed to make you think of each flagged URL as a task, with ‘Confirm Fix’ as a way to mark it as complete.
Before you click, it helps to ask yourself if you have really fixed anything. If you’ve solved a server or CDN issue that was causing pages to crash, clicking a button speeds up the recovery and makes those pages quickly re-scanned. However, if the report shows the results of your recent changes, clicking a button is unnecessary, and your time can be better spent focusing on the real issues that need attention.
Looking Forward
Most of that the page index report flags will clear up on their own, because most of it was never a problem to begin with. If Google rescans the page and sees that the problem is gone, it automatically updates the count, even if you haven’t clicked ‘Confirm Fix.’ Expected 404 errors, redirects, and canonical changes will naturally decrease as Google re-examines these pages.
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