Key takeaways
- Not every excluded page is a problem: many exclusions are deliberate and correct.
- Look at the statuses that affect pages you want indexed, grouped by page type.
- Fix the cause for the whole group, then check the report again after a few weeks.
Search Console's page indexing report shows which of your pages Google has stored and, for the rest, the reason it has not. Most sites have a long list of excluded pages, and most of that list is fine. The skill is telling the exclusions you want from the ones that are costing you traffic.
Start with what you expect
Before reading a single status, list the page types you want in search: products, services, articles, locations. Then look for those. A tag archive that is excluded is probably right; a product page that is excluded needs a reason.
The statuses you will see most
| Status | What it means | Usually a problem? |
|---|---|---|
| Crawled, currently not indexed | Google fetched the page and chose not to store it yet | Yes, if it is a page you want |
| Discovered, currently not indexed | Google knows the address but has not fetched it | Often a sign of too many low-value pages |
| Duplicate without user-selected canonical | Google found near-identical pages and picked one | Check it picked the right one |
| Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user | Your canonical tag was overruled | Yes: investigate |
| Alternate page with proper canonical tag | The page points to another version, as intended | No |
| Page with redirect | The address redirects elsewhere | No, unless it is linked heavily |
| Not found (404) | The address does not exist | Only if it should |
| Soft 404 | The page looks empty or like an error | Yes |
| Blocked by robots.txt | Your robots file stops the fetch | If unintended, yes |
| Excluded by noindex tag | A tag tells Google to leave it out | If unintended, yes |
| Server error (5xx) | Your server failed when Google asked | Yes |
A working method
- Open a status, then group the listed addresses by template or section.
- Open one typical page from each group and check it against the cause the status suggests.
- Decide whether the group should be indexed. If not, leave it, or make the exclusion deliberate with a noindex tag or a redirect.
- If it should be, fix the cause for the whole group, not one page at a time.
After you fix something
Use the validation feature on the status, or request indexing for a sample, then wait. Indexing changes take days or weeks to show. Judge success by the share of important pages indexed, not by the number of changes made.
Related reading
Our article on why Google is not indexing your pages lists the usual causes, and canonical tags explained covers the most common overrule. This is the daily work of our technical SEO service.