The Page indexing report: every status explained and what to do

Search Console's Page indexing report (under Indexing, then Pages) shows how many of the URLs Google knows about are indexed, and, for those that are not, the reason. It is one of the most useful reports in the tool and one of the most alarming at first sight. A site with 3,000 real pages may show 9,000 "not indexed" URLs, and the natural reaction is that something is badly wrong. Usually it is not. Most of those URLs are not supposed to be indexed.

This guide goes through the statuses, separates the expected ones from the ones that deserve attention, and describes a routine for using the report.

How to read the report

• The chart shows indexed and not indexed counts over time. Trends matter more than totals: a sudden rise in a reason is a signal; a stable number usually is not.
• The reasons table lists why pages are not indexed, with counts. Click a reason to see example URLs (a sample, capped at about a thousand).
• The sitemap filter at the top lets you limit the report to URLs in your submitted sitemaps. This is often the most useful view: these are the pages you told Google you want indexed.

Data lags a few days behind, and counts can change in steps as Google reprocesses the site. Do not read meaning into a single day's movement.

Statuses that are usually fine

Reason	What it means	When to act
Page with redirect	The URL redirects elsewhere; the target is indexed instead	Only if internal links or sitemaps still point to these URLs
Alternate page with proper canonical tag	A duplicate that correctly points to its canonical	Rarely; this is the system working
Excluded by 'noindex' tag	The page has a noindex directive	Only if a page that should be indexed appears here
Not found (404)	The URL returns 404	If important pages appear, or internal links point to them
Blocked by robots.txt	Google is not allowed to crawl the URL	If the URLs should be indexed, or if you meant to use noindex

The common mistake with these is trying to drive the number to zero. A site that redirects old URLs, canonicalises tracking parameters and noindexes its search results will always have many URLs in these categories. Check that the examples are the kind of URL you expect, then move on.

Statuses that deserve investigation

Crawled – currently not indexed

Google fetched the page and decided not to index it, at least for now. This is mostly a quality or value judgement: the page may be thin, very similar to other pages, or not seen as useful enough. It also appears for new pages that have not been processed yet. If important pages sit here for weeks, compare them honestly with pages that are indexed: content depth, uniqueness, internal links. The pruning guide and internal linking guide cover the usual fixes. Requesting indexing repeatedly does not change the judgement.

Discovered – currently not indexed

Google knows the URL exists but has not crawled it yet. On large sites this can be a sign of limited crawl capacity or low priority; on small sites it usually means Google does not see the URLs as important enough to fetch soon, often because they are weakly linked. See crawl budget for when this is a capacity problem and when it is not.

Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user

You declared a canonical, but Google picked a different URL. This means your signals disagree: internal links, sitemaps, redirects or content point somewhere other than your canonical tag. Inspect examples with URL Inspection to see which URL Google chose, then align the signals. The canonical tags guide and the duplicate content guide explain how.

Duplicate without user-selected canonical

Google found duplicates and you gave no canonical. It picked one itself. Often harmless, but worth fixing for important templates so you control which URL appears.

Soft 404

The page returns 200 but looks empty or like an error. Common causes: empty category or search pages, discontinued products with no content, failed JavaScript rendering. See HTTP status codes.

Server error (5xx), Redirect error, Blocked due to access forbidden (403), Blocked due to other 4xx

Technical failures. Check server logs and recent changes; firewall rules and bot protection are frequent causes of 403 and 429-related problems. Redirect errors include loops, chains that are too long, and redirects to invalid URLs.

Indexed, though blocked by robots.txt

Google indexed the URL without crawling it, usually because many links point to it. If you want it out of the index, allow crawling and use noindex instead; if you want it indexed properly, allow crawling. See noindex and robots.txt mistakes.

Blocked due to unauthorized request (401)

The URL asks for a login. Expected for account areas and staging sites; a problem if public pages appear here, which usually means an authentication rule or a CDN setting is applied too broadly.

Page indexed without content

Listed as a warning rather than an exclusion: Google indexed the URL but could not read its content, often because of blocked resources, cloaking-like behaviour or a format it cannot parse. Inspect one example and view the crawled page to see what Google received.

A worked example

A hypothetical online furniture shop filters the report to its sitemap and finds 1,800 of its 6,000 product URLs under "Crawled – currently not indexed", up from 300 three months earlier. The examples are almost all colour variants published as separate product pages with identical descriptions. Google crawled them, saw near-duplicates of the main product, and declined to index them. The shop consolidates variants onto one URL per product with a colour selector, redirects the old variant URLs, and removes them from the sitemap. Over the following weeks the count falls, and the main product pages, now carrying all the signals, gain impressions. No amount of "Request indexing" would have produced that result.

A routine for working the report

1. Filter to submitted sitemap URLs. Any reason here other than "indexed" is a page you said you want indexed but is not. Start with these.
2. Sort reasons by trend, not size. A reason that jumped last week matters more than a large stable one.
3. Open examples for each reason and check five to ten URLs. Are they the kind of URL you expect in that status?
4. Inspect a few with URL Inspection to see the details: last crawl, canonical chosen, page fetch status. The URL Inspection guide explains each field.
5. Fix the cause, then use "Validate fix" if you want Google to recheck and report on the whole group.
6. Record what you did and when, so you can connect later changes in the chart to your fixes.

Patterns that point to specific problems

• A sudden jump in "Excluded by noindex" after a release: a template or plugin added noindex where it should not.
• A jump in "Blocked by robots.txt": a robots.txt change matched more than intended.
• Growing "Crawled – not indexed" on one template: that template's pages are too thin or too similar.
• Thousands of unfamiliar URLs in any status, especially with spam-like words or foreign languages: possible hacked content. See security issues.
• Parameter URLs flooding "Duplicate" statuses: faceted navigation or tracking parameters being crawled; see faceted navigation.

The report's limits

The report shows Google's view of URLs it knows about, with samples rather than complete lists. It does not tell you why a page is judged low value, and it does not reflect other search engines. Pair it with your own crawl and logs for the full picture, and with a regular technical check such as the SEO checker to catch sitewide noindex, robots and canonical mistakes before they show up as a jump in this chart.