You open Google Search Console, go to the Page indexing report, and under 'Why pages aren't indexed' there is a row you were not expecting: 'Crawled - currently not indexed', with a number next to it. Sometimes its neighbour 'Discovered - currently not indexed' is there too. You click into it and find pages you care about: a service page, a product, last week's post.
Neither status is an error, and neither means Google has penalised the site. They describe two different points in the same pipeline. 'Discovered' means Google knows the URL exists but hasn't fetched it yet. 'Crawled' means Google fetched it and decided, for now, not to put it in the index. The fixes are different, so it is worth reading which one you have before doing anything.
Then check whether the page matters. Google is direct about this: most sites have at least a few unindexed pages, non-indexed URLs can be fine, and you should not expect every URL on your site to be indexed. The stated goal is the canonical version of every important page. Tag archives, internal search results, URLs with tracking or sort parameters, near-empty test pages and old posts you would not link to today can stay out of the index without costing you anything.
For the pages that do matter, paste each one into the URL Inspection box at the top of Search Console. It shows the status for that exact URL, the 'User-declared canonical' and the 'Google-selected canonical'. Google recommends URL Inspection rather than the report for checking a specific page.
What Google says each status means
These are the definitions from Google's Page indexing report help, in its own words where it matters.
- 'Discovered - currently not indexed': the page was found by Google but not crawled yet. Google says it typically wanted to crawl the URL, but this was expected to overload the site, so it rescheduled the crawl. That is why the last crawl date is empty.
- 'Crawled - currently not indexed': the page was crawled by Google but not indexed. Google says it may or may not be indexed in the future, and there is no need to resubmit the URL for crawling.
- 'Duplicate without user-selected canonical': Google treats the page as a duplicate of another one and, because you didn't say which is preferred, chose the canonical itself. This page won't be served in Search.
- 'Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user': you marked this page as canonical, but Google decided another URL makes a better canonical and indexed that one instead.
- 'Alternate page with proper canonical tag': the page points to its canonical correctly and that canonical is indexed. Google's help says there is nothing you need to do.
'Crawled - currently not indexed': give Google a reason to keep the page
Google fetched the page and could read it. The decision not to index it is about the page, not the server. Google's helpful content guidance gives the questions it wants you to ask, and they are the ones that move these pages:
- Does the page provide original information, reporting, research or analysis, or does it restate what is already on other pages?
- Does it provide substantial value when compared with other pages in search results for the same thing?
- If it draws on other sources, does it avoid simply copying or rewriting them? Supplier descriptions pasted onto product pages and city pages that differ only by the town name are the usual examples.
- Is it produced well, or does it look sloppy or hastily produced?
- Does it repeat another page on your own site? Two posts on the same question compete with each other. Merge them into the stronger one and redirect the weaker URL to it.
Make sure your own site links to it
Google uses links to find new pages and as a signal of how relevant a page is. Its link guidance says every page you care about should have a link from at least one other page on your site. A page that only appears in your sitemap, with nothing in the menu, footer or body text pointing at it, is telling Google it is not important to you either.
Link to the page from somewhere a visitor would naturally go: the relevant service page, a category page, or a related post, using descriptive link text rather than 'click here'. Check that the links are real links. Google says it can generally only crawl a link if it is an HTML 'a' element with an 'href' attribute. Buttons or menus that navigate only through JavaScript click handlers may not be followed at all.
Duplicates and canonicals: tell Google which version you mean
Many 'not indexed' rows are the same page under several addresses: with and without 'www', http and https, with a trailing slash and without, with '?ref=' or sort parameters on the end. Google picks one version to index and leaves the rest out.
Google's canonicalization guide lists the ways to state your preference, in order of strength. A redirect is a strong signal that its target should become canonical, and is meant for retiring a duplicate page. A rel=canonical link element is also a strong signal. Listing a URL in your sitemap is a weak signal. Google says none of them are required, and the wording throughout is that Google decides; your choice is an input, not an order.
- Point the canonical tag at one version of the page, using an absolute URL rather than a relative path.
- Use the same URL everywhere: the canonical tag, the sitemap and your internal links. Google lists giving different canonical URLs for the same page in different places as a mistake.
- Don't use robots.txt to handle duplicates. Google notes it may still index URLs that robots.txt blocks, without their content.
- Don't use noindex to choose between duplicate pages on one site; Google says it does not recommend that.
- If URL Inspection shows a 'Google-selected canonical' different from yours, compare the two pages. If they really are near-identical, either accept Google's pick or make your preferred page meaningfully different.
'Discovered - currently not indexed': usually patience, sometimes the server
Here Google has not looked at the page yet. On a small, new site with a handful of these, the honest answer is to wait while you build links to the pages, because Google's help says it can take a week or so for Google to start crawling and indexing a new page or site.
If a large share of a site's URLs sit in 'Discovered' for months, Google's crawl budget guide is the reference. It says crawling goes up when a server responds quickly and goes down when it returns 5xx server errors. It also says duplicate URLs, soft 404 pages and low-value URLs waste crawling, and recommends consolidating duplicates so crawling focuses on unique content. That guide is written for very large sites, but the mechanics are the same: a slow host and thousands of near-identical URLs keep the pages you care about waiting.
What doesn't help: pressing 'Request indexing' again
The 'Request indexing' button in URL Inspection is the first thing most people reach for, and the one Google is clearest about. Its recrawl documentation says requesting a recrawl multiple times for the same URL won't get it crawled any faster, and that requesting a crawl does not guarantee inclusion in search results, instantly or at all. The URL Inspection help adds that there is a daily limit on how many index requests you can submit.
Use it once, after you have changed the page in a way that matters. Then leave it. For many pages at once, an up-to-date sitemap is the tool Google points to.
How long it takes, and how to prevent it next time
Google gives ranges, not promises. New content can take a few days to be indexed. Crawling can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. If you click 'Validate fix' on a row in the report, Google says validation typically takes up to about two weeks and in some cases much longer, and it emails you as validation moves through states such as 'Started', 'Looking good', 'Passed' or 'Failed'. Google also says to wait for one validation cycle to finish before requesting another.
To keep the list short in future, publish fewer, better pages rather than many thin ones; link every new page from at least one existing page the day it goes live; keep one URL per page across links, canonicals and the sitemap; and check the Page indexing report monthly. Google's help says that, ideally, you should see a gradually increasing count of indexed pages as your site grows.
If you would rather have the site set up for you
If you are a small business and would rather not untangle canonicals yourself, OneSol's Max plan ($1 for the first month, then $29/month) includes a website built with you, connected to your own domain, with CRM and SEO set up. Nobody can promise rankings, and we don't, but the basics in this guide are part of the setup.