Knowledge base v2.13.0 · Community edition · data through 2 October 2026
Topic · The index and its signals
Google described the two not-indexed statuses as different stages: 'Discovered – currently not indexed' is a crawl-scheduling state in which Google knows the URL but does not want to crawl it yet, and 'Crawled – currently not indexed' is an index selection decision taken after processing. On stage Google called the first the nastier one and said owners can influence it by getting other URLs indexed and showing that the site's content is useful, while the Page indexing help explains it by expected server overload. For 'Crawled – currently not indexed', Google said the cause is most of the time quality rather than a technical fault: check whether the pages match the quality of the indexed parts of the site, or whether a different template hides where their content is; the help page adds that such pages need no resubmission. Other not-indexed reasons include noindex and 'Alternate page with proper canonical tag', the canonical choice of deduplication that site owners see in Search Console, and Google suggested the report's reasons for checking index selection issues when testing changes. Google's URL Inspection help says a valid live test only confirms that Google can access a page; indexing still depends on other conditions, such as not being a duplicate and being of high enough quality. On Day 3 a community speaker said analysing Search Console query data with an LLM helped his agency spot developer mistakes such as unwanted pages being indexed, which Search Console also shows directly. On Day 1 Gary Illyes had already pointed to the report's breakdown of reasons as a way to find patterns in how a site's content is crawled and served. An audio recording of Day 1 added that soft 404s are looked up in this report rather than in Crawl Stats, and Dave Smart warned in Lightning session B that a URL reported as blocked by robots.txt may not be disallowed itself: Search Console reports a block anywhere in a redirect chain on the chain's first URL, so check whether the URL redirects and test every URL in the chain.
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Search Console's page indexing report breaks down the reasons why pages do or do not show in Search, and its categories help find patterns in how a site's content is crawled and served to Google's crawlers.
Speaker Gary IllyesIn Day 1, 14:35 · How crawling errors affect SearchEvidence transcript
Google said soft 404s, like some other problem categories, are looked up in Search Console's page indexing report, while other crawl issues are debugged in the Crawl Stats report.
Speaker Gary IllyesIn Day 1, 14:35 · How crawling errors affect SearchEvidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-MON-03
Dave Smart said Search Console reports such a block only on the first URL of the chain, which is confusing: the URL shown as blocked by robots.txt is not itself disallowed.
Speaker Dave SmartIn Day 1, 15:30 · Lightning session B: Robots.txtEvidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-CAN-11glossary term Redirect chain
When Search Console says a URL is blocked by robots.txt but the file does not block it, check whether the URL redirects and test every URL in the chain.
Speaker Dave SmartIn Day 1, 15:30 · Lightning session B: Robots.txtEvidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-CAN-11
To use Search Console to debug what Google can see on a site and why, Erin Sparling said the first step is to get access to the site by verifying ownership (the speaker's words were authorized domains).
Speaker Erin SparlingIn Day 2, 11:15 · What is Google friendly JavaScriptEvidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-MON-01
Erin Sparling showed a Search Console result saying a URL would be indexed only under certain conditions, one of which had not been met, and contrasted it with the result for an available URL whose content loads.
Speaker Erin SparlingIn Day 2, 11:15 · What is Google friendly JavaScriptEvidence transcript
Google's duplication talk described three related parts of deduplication: building clusters, localization, and selecting the representative URL, which is the canonicalization site owners see in Search Console.
Speaker John MuellerIn Day 2, 11:55 · Handling web duplicationEvidence transcript
'Discovered – currently not indexed' in Search Console is a crawl-scheduling state: Google knows the URL exists but does not want to crawl it yet. Of the two not-indexed statuses discussed, it was called the 'kind of nastier' one.
“The first one is kind of nastier.”
Speaker GoogleIn Day 2, 15:40 · Deciding what goes in the index?Evidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-MON-03glossary term Discovered – currently not indexed
Site owners can influence 'Discovered – currently not indexed' by getting other URLs of the site indexed and showing Google's systems that the site's content is good and useful to users.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 2, 15:40 · Deciding what goes in the index?Evidence transcript
'Crawled – currently not indexed' in Search Console is an index selection decision: Google crawled and processed the page but decided not to keep it in the index.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 2, 15:40 · Deciding what goes in the index?Evidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-MON-03glossary term Crawled – currently not indexed
If content quality is even across a site, a page reported as 'Crawled – currently not indexed' may be using a different template that keeps Google from understanding where its content is.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 2, 15:40 · Deciding what goes in the index?Evidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-HTM-01
'Crawled – currently not indexed' is most of the time a quality issue rather than a technical one: the pages are usually low quality or useless for the index, for example duplicates or soft 404s.
“most of the time it is actually a quality issue”
Speaker GoogleIn Day 2, 15:40 · Deciding what goes in the index?Evidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-MON-03
The first thing to check for pages reported as 'Crawled – currently not indexed' is whether their quality is on par with the parts of the site that Google does index.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 2, 15:40 · Deciding what goes in the index?Evidence transcript
Search Console's Page indexing report is the place to check for index selection issues, and its not-indexed reasons are useful when testing changes on a site.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 2, 15:40 · Deciding what goes in the index?Evidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-MON-03
Not-indexed reasons in the Page indexing report include pages excluded by a noindex rule and 'Alternate page with proper canonical tag'.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 2, 15:40 · Deciding what goes in the index?Evidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-MON-03
Google's URL Inspection help says a valid live test only confirms that Google can access a page for indexing; the page must still meet other conditions to be indexed, such as having no manual action, not being a duplicate and being of high enough quality.
Publisher Google Search Console HelpAnnotates Day 2, 11:15 · What is Google friendly JavaScript
Used byrequirement DEV-MON-02
Google's Page indexing report help says a 'Discovered – currently not indexed' page was found but not crawled yet, typically because Google wanted to crawl it but expected the crawl to overload the site, so it rescheduled the crawl.
Publisher Google Search Console HelpAnnotates Day 2, 15:40 · Deciding what goes in the index?
Used byrequirement DEV-MON-03glossary term Discovered – currently not indexed
Google's Page indexing report help says a 'Crawled – currently not indexed' page was crawled but not indexed, may or may not be indexed in the future, and does not need to be resubmitted for crawling.
Publisher Google Search Console HelpAnnotates Day 2, 15:40 · Deciding what goes in the index?
Used byrequirement DEV-MON-03glossary term Crawled – currently not indexed
The help page explains 'Discovered – currently not indexed' by expected server overload (capacity), while on stage it was explained as Google not wanting the URL yet (demand); the crawl budget guide covers both, so first rule out slow responses and server errors, then treat the status as a quality and demand problem.
Author Ibrahim AnjroAnnotates Day 2, 15:40 · Deciding what goes in the index?
Used byrequirement DEV-MON-03
Repeatedly submitting 'Discovered – currently not indexed' URLs does not change why they wait, because the status reflects a crawl-scheduling decision; raise the site's demonstrated quality instead, for example by improving or removing weak pages that are already indexed.
Author Ibrahim AnjroAnnotates Day 2, 15:40 · Deciding what goes in the index?
Treat 'Crawled – currently not indexed' as a quality audit list: compare those URLs with indexed pages of the same type for thin, duplicate or soft-404-like content and for template differences before looking for technical faults.
Author Ibrahim AnjroAnnotates Day 2, 15:40 · Deciding what goes in the index?
Used byrequirement DEV-MON-03
Nik Vujic said analysing Search Console query data with an LLM also helped his agency spot developer mistakes, such as unwanted pages that got indexed, which can also be found in Search Console itself.
Speaker Nik VujicIn Day 3, 14:20 · Lightning session L: Understanding SERPs and your usersEvidence transcript
Google said soft 404s, like some other problem categories, are looked up in Search Console's page indexing report, while other crawl issues are debugged in the Crawl Stats report.
CDN captcha challenges often return HTTP 200; Googlebot does not solve them and sees only content with a 200 status, which indexing then classifies as a soft 404, reported as an error in Search Console.
Google said soft 404s, like some other problem categories, are looked up in Search Console's page indexing report, while other crawl issues are debugged in the Crawl Stats report.
Search Console's page indexing report breaks down the reasons why pages do or do not show in Search, and its categories help find patterns in how a site's content is crawled and served to Google's crawlers.
'Discovered – currently not indexed' in Search Console is a crawl-scheduling state: Google knows the URL exists but does not want to crawl it yet. Of the two not-indexed statuses discussed, it was called the 'kind of nastier' one.
The scheduler is shared infrastructure that decides what to fetch and when and sends URLs to the crawler. Each team decides the scheduling parameters for its own user agents.
'Discovered – currently not indexed' in Search Console is a crawl-scheduling state: Google knows the URL exists but does not want to crawl it yet. Of the two not-indexed statuses discussed, it was called the 'kind of nastier' one.
Google's crawl budget guide is written for sites with over 1 million unique pages that change weekly, over 10,000 pages that change daily, or many URLs reported as 'Discovered – currently not indexed'.
The help page explains 'Discovered – currently not indexed' by expected server overload (capacity), while on stage it was explained as Google not wanting the URL yet (demand); the crawl budget guide covers both, so first rule out slow responses and server errors, then treat the status as a quality and demand problem.
On smaller sites, slow indexing is almost always a demand problem, meaning quality, not a capacity problem.
Site owners can influence 'Discovered – currently not indexed' by getting other URLs of the site indexed and showing Google's systems that the site's content is good and useful to users.
Crawl demand is driven by the quality of the site, the change frequency of its URLs and their popularity on the internet.
'Crawled – currently not indexed' is most of the time a quality issue rather than a technical one: the pages are usually low quality or useless for the index, for example duplicates or soft 404s.
On smaller sites, slow indexing is almost always a demand problem, meaning quality, not a capacity problem.
Treat 'Crawled – currently not indexed' as a quality audit list: compare those URLs with indexed pages of the same type for thin, duplicate or soft-404-like content and for template differences before looking for technical faults.
On smaller sites, slow indexing is almost always a demand problem, meaning quality, not a capacity problem.
Search Console's Page indexing report is the place to check for index selection issues, and its not-indexed reasons are useful when testing changes on a site.
Search Console's page indexing report breaks down the reasons why pages do or do not show in Search, and its categories help find patterns in how a site's content is crawled and served to Google's crawlers.
Watch the Page indexing report and treat its not-indexed reasons as a work list
Rests on 10 claims, 10 of them in this topic
Never route a crawlable URL's redirects through a URL that robots.txt blocks
Rests on 4 claims, 2 of them in this topic
Wrap each page's primary content in one clearly delimited main area
Rests on 14 claims, 1 of them in this topic
Verify every production host in Search Console before launch
Rests on 1 claim, 1 of them in this topic
Rests on 7 claims, 1 of them in this topic