See what Google sees.
Self-hosted indexing diagnostics for your sitemap.
Free, open source, runs entirely on your machine.
You can't rank what Google can't find.
The SEO industry has spent twenty years building tools for the gap between Indexed and Ranking: keyword research, content optimization, backlink analysis, technical audits. All valuable. All predicated on Google having indexed your URLs in the first place.
When Google hasn't indexed your URLs - or has indexed only a fraction - none of the rest matters. You're optimizing pages that don't exist in search. You're building authority for URLs Google won't crawl.
Beacon answers a question Search Console makes harder than it should be:
Of the URLs in my sitemap, which ones is Google actually indexing - and which ones isn't it?
Point Beacon at your domain. Get the answer in under two minutes.
| Stage | What it means |
|---|---|
| Published | The URL exists on your server. Returns 200. |
| Submitted | The URL is in your sitemap. |
| Crawled | Google has fetched the page at least once. |
| Indexed | Google has decided the page is worth showing in results. |
Beacon shows you which stage every URL in your sitemap is at. That's the whole tool.
Quick Start
# 1. Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/brianonai/beacon.git
cd beacon
# 2. Copy the environment template
cp .env.example .env
# 3. Add your Google OAuth credentials to .env
# (5-min setup, walkthrough in the README)
nano .env
# 4. Start
docker compose up -d
# 5. Open http://localhost:13000Real-world story: 170 URLs, 17 indexed.
In late 2025, I built ChiliStation - a curated chili recipe community with original photography, schema-marked recipes, and 30+ original blog articles. Five months in, traffic was flat.
I pointed Beacon at it. The scan took 108 seconds.
The result: 170 URLs in the sitemap. 12 indexed. 143 invisible to Google.
Nothing in the standard SEO toolkit had surfaced this. The site was working perfectly - and 93% of it might as well not have existed.
About
Beacon was built by Brian Diamond, a fractional Chief AI Officer working with companies on AI governance, infrastructure, and SaaS strategy. After 25 years in IT and infrastructure, Brian builds tools that solve problems consultants get hired to fix - and gives them away.
Beacon is free because the indexing diagnostic problem is worth solving for free. The work that pays the bills is at BrianOnAI and Onaro.
If Beacon was useful:
- Subscribe to The CAIO Brief
- Need fractional CAIO support, AI governance work, or help with SEO/indexing at scale? Get in touch
Want this hosted?
Beacon Cloud (in development) runs scans weekly, alerts you when index status changes, and tracks history per-property. No Docker, no Google Cloud setup, no terminal - just sign in and see your indexing dashboard.
No commitment, no spam. We'll only email you when Cloud is ready to test.