Time to read: 5 minutes
If you want to do business online, ranking well in Google’s search results for key terms relevant to your products and services is vital. This is because Google is nearly the only game in town, as it facilitates over 90% of web searches.
Sometimes your content might not rank highly due to it being outdated, not lengthy or detailed enough, poorly presented, or for other reasons that can be rectified with the help of a dedicated SEO team. Other times, however, your site might be running into more technical issues, which is where Google’s Page Indexing report comes in and certain web development initiatives might need to be taken.
About the Page Indexing Report
Google’s Page Indexing report is a tool for reviewing the indexing status of the URLs on your website. You will want the vast majority of the pages on your site to be indexed by Google, with indexing meaning that the search engine has both found the pages and is able to offer them up to users for specific search terms.
For certain pages, like those as part of a PPC campaign or those that feature duplicate copy, your team will likely want to “noindex” for strategic reasons, but barring these rare occasions, you would like to get nearly every other page on your site indexed.
The Page Indexing report will give you a breakdown of the following:
- Which URLs have been indexed
- Which URLs have been requested but are not currently indexed
- Reasons why select URLs could not be indexed
- Fixes that are recommended to help Google understand your site structure
As detailed in the Page Indexing link above, there can be a wide variety of reasons why a given page is not currently being indexed by Google, with possibilities including:
- Server errors
- Redirect errors
- The URL being blocked by robots.txt
- The URL being marked “noindex”
- The URL 404ing (cannot be found)
There are numerous others, of course, but one of the more perplexing errors is “Discovered – currently not indexed.”
”Discovered – Currently Not Indexed”
As stated by Google, this error is defined in the following way:
“The page was found by Google, but not crawled yet. Typically, Google wanted to crawl the URL but this was expected to overload the site; therefore Google rescheduled the crawl. This is why the last crawl date is empty on the report.”
While this can be frustrating since having your site’s pages crawled and indexed as quickly as possible is greatly beneficial, Google is trying to avoid any harm to your site. As they state, crawling and indexing of the given page can still take place in the future, but in the meantime, there are some things you can do to speed things up.
How to Fix the Error
- Request indexing within Google Search Console – Your first line of defense in these cases, and the one that will more often than not solve the issue, is to simply use the function in Search Console to request the page to be indexed. This will alert Google to the issue, and they will very likely resolve it quickly.
- Review your page’s quality – While Google can’t confirm the quality of a page that it hasn’t actually crawled, it can infer it based on similar pages on the site and your site structure as a whole. Increasing the depth of the page’s content, adjusting its presentation, offering more expertise, and other improvements can better position you to get such a page indexed.
- Consider crawl efficiency – Sometimes websites face duplication issues via HTTP and HTTPS site versions, content coming from several subdomains, and URL parameter problems. When your site has these duplications, it can lead to Google crawling and indexing pages that aren’t relevant, skipping over or delaying ones that are.
- Check your internal linking – Pages that don’t link out to others on your site, and aren’t linked to from others as well, are not considered as valuable as well-linked pages in Google’s eyes. These “orphan pages” are just sort of floating out there without connection to other areas of your site, so Google may be skipping over them in the belief that they don’t offer much value. Interlinking these pages will rectify the problem and get you on your way to indexing them.
- Check nofollow links – The “nofollow” tag is one used by sites to signal to Google that certain links should not be given “credit” in a way, and websites will use these tags for a variety of reasons. While pages with nofollows can still be indexed, Google will often view these pages as less important, so turning nofollow links into follows could help when you’re struggling with indexing.
Read More on Search Console and Analytics
At Sixth City, we’re dedicated to assisting readers via insightful blog posts focused on key tactics and best practices in digital marketing, but we’re also always available to take the reins and put our talents to work as well. Here are some other posts you may find useful:
