The question sounds trivial — “is this page in Google?” — but each of the four ways to answer it has a different scope, and picking the wrong one produces false confidence.
Type site:example.com/page into Google. Works on any site, takes five seconds — and is approximate by design: counts fluctuate and indexed pages can be missing from results. Use it as a spot check, never as evidence. Full detail on its limits: see the site: operator guide in this hub.
Search a unique sentence from the page in quotes. If Google returns the page, it is indexed. This is the most reliable manual signal for pages you don't own — slower than site:, but far harder to get a false negative from.
The URL Inspection tool gives the authoritative verdict for one URL: index status, the canonical Google selected, last crawl date. Constraints: verified properties only, one URL at a time, daily quota. Read the crawl date and selected canonical, not just the green tick.
When the question is a list — 500 backlinks, 3,000 product pages — manual methods stop being an option. A bulk Google index checker runs every URL through several query types (site:, inurl:, direct URL, quoted match) and returns a per-URL indexed / not-indexed report. Works for any site, no ownership verification, first 50 checks free.