diff --git a/inc/indexer.php b/inc/indexer.php
index 9d8d6f99b9d9ab0f37cee9a826251dbe5748814f..3f56e5fe577659924318f885df735db23855c5af 100644
--- a/inc/indexer.php
+++ b/inc/indexer.php
@@ -1174,18 +1174,8 @@ function & idx_get_stopwords() {
  * @author Tom N Harris <tnharris@whoopdedo.org>
  */
 function idx_addPage($page, $verbose=false, $force=false) {
-    // check if indexing needed
     $idxtag = metaFN($page,'.indexed');
-    if(!$force && @file_exists($idxtag)){
-        if(trim(io_readFile($idxtag)) == idx_get_version()){
-            $last = @filemtime($idxtag);
-            if($last > @filemtime(wikiFN($page))){
-                if ($verbose) print("Indexer: index for $page up to date".DOKU_LF);
-                return false;
-            }
-        }
-    }
-
+    // check if page was deleted but is still in the index
     if (!page_exists($page)) {
         if (!@file_exists($idxtag)) {
             if ($verbose) print("Indexer: $page does not exist, ignoring".DOKU_LF);
@@ -1200,6 +1190,18 @@ function idx_addPage($page, $verbose=false, $force=false) {
         @unlink($idxtag);
         return $result;
     }
+
+    // check if indexing needed
+    if(!$force && @file_exists($idxtag)){
+        if(trim(io_readFile($idxtag)) == idx_get_version()){
+            $last = @filemtime($idxtag);
+            if($last > @filemtime(wikiFN($page))){
+                if ($verbose) print("Indexer: index for $page up to date".DOKU_LF);
+                return false;
+            }
+        }
+    }
+
     $indexenabled = p_get_metadata($page, 'internal index', METADATA_RENDER_UNLIMITED);
     if ($indexenabled === false) {
         $result = false;