Google Search Console is extremely helpful.
But sometimes, it can be confusing.
Have you noticed one of your pages marked with the status: “Discovered – currently not indexed”?
If so, you’re in good company.
While seemingly straightforward, this status can be a bit ambiguous and tricky to fix.
But we’ve got all the information you need to better understand this status – and ultimately resolve it.
Table of Contents
Discovered – Currently Not Indexed: What Does It Mean?
Google Search Console makes it easy to evaluate the status of various pages in your website. Many of these status messages are clear and straightforward, and hopefully, most of them won’t require any action on your part.
However, the “Discovered – currently not indexed” status can be perplexing in a few ways. Why is a discovered page not being indexed? What’s taking so long? And what can we do about it?
Essentially, this message means that Google is aware of a page that exists, but it has not yet crawled or indexed that page. Google’s indexing process always unfolds over these three steps: discovery, crawling, and indexing.
This status indicates that the page in question is currently between steps one and two.
And yes, it does mean your pages aren’t showing up in Google search results.
This is a totally normal message to receive, especially if you have a website with fewer than 10,000 pages. In many instances, the message will resolve itself. This is simply an indication that Google is between steps of indexing your pages, and if you give it a few more days to a few more weeks, it should resolve on its own.
But what if you want your pages to be indexed faster?
Or what if you suspect a deeper problem could be affecting your pages?
Root Causes of the “Discovered – Currently Not Indexed” Status
There are a few potential root causes of this status, but most of them boil down to an issue with something called “crawl budget.”
Believe it or not, Google doesn’t have infinite power or infinite resources. It deploys a network of crawling bots affectionately known as spiders to crawl and index webpages, but it can’t crawl the web all at once and it can’t crawl the web instantaneously.
Accordingly, there’s a kind of “budget” in place to make sure crawling resources are used effectively. If a crawling effort would be fruitless, it becomes a much lower priority. If a crawling effort would result in indexing low quality pages, it becomes a lower priority as well. Google wants to prioritize crawling and indexing webpages in such a way to improve user experience and minimize total resources spent doing so. If it’s deliberately choosing not to crawl one of your webpages, despite that page being discovered, it’s probably because your page is a lower priority than other pages.
These are some of the potential root causes:
- An overwhelmed server. If your server is overloaded, it’s going to be problematic for users and crawling bots alike. Accordingly, Google will probably avoid calling and indexing your page temporarily, trying again in the future to see if your server issues have been resolved. Fortunately, these server issues are relatively easy to fix. We’ll explore potential solutions in the next section.
- Too much content. It’s also possible that your website simply has too much content, considering its age, relevance, and position. If your website has hundreds of new pages in the first few days after launching, or if it has thousands of pages to crawl, Google is going to delay crawling and indexing it. While it’s good to develop more content, there is an upper limit in the early days – and besides, excessive content production could be a sign of an organization focusing on quantity over quality. Cleaning up and streamlining your content could be the answer.
- Poor quality content. If you have a reasonable volume of content on your website, Google could be selectively ignoring your pages because of potential quality issues. If Google has reason to believe that your content isn’t good or isn’t helpful for users, it’s going to deprioritize your website in its crawl budget and indexing purview. There are many individual issues that could cause Google to evaluate your content as low quality, many of which are obvious. In any case, you’ll need to make a concentrated effort to improve the quality of your content if you want to succeed.
- Missing or poor internal linking. Internal linking is how Google better understands how your pages relate to each other and better understands how your website functions overall. It’s also indispensable for assisting with user navigation and overall user experience. Accordingly, if your website has no internal linking structure, or if your internal linking structure is fragmented and confusing, Google isn’t going to prioritize crawling and indexing your website.
How to Solve the “Discovered – Currently Not Indexed” Issue
If you’re currently struggling with the “Discovered – currently not indexed” status for one or more of your pages, there are several solutions you can try. The first step of the process is to try and ascertain which root cause is affecting your lack of indexation; you may or may not be able to pinpoint a root cause, given what you currently know.
In any case, some combination of these strategies should allow you to fix the “Discovered – currently not indexed” status and allow your pages to be indexed:
- Wait. The first, most straightforward, and easiest strategy is simply to wait. In the vast majority of cases, your pages only have this status because Google hasn’t gotten around to crawling and indexing your webpages yet. If your website is relatively new, or if these pages were recently published, give it a couple of weeks before you start to become concerned. Of course, if you’re in a hurry, or if you suspect something might be wrong with your website, you can always try the other strategies below to accelerate the process.
- Request indexing. One option available to you is to request indexing through Google Search Console directly. Find the “URL inspection” option on the menu and enter the URL of the page in question. Your page shouldn’t be currently indexed. If that’s the case, you can hit the “Request indexing” button, thereby manually requesting Google to index your page. In most cases, you’ll receive a message from Google that your URL has been added to the priority crawl queue. Do note that there’s an upper limit to the number of pages for which you can request indexing. This number isn’t explicitly stated, but if you submit too many URLs this way, you’ll eventually receive denials. Focus only on your most important pages when submitting these requests. For most users, this simple action fixes the problem within a few days; however, if it doesn’t, there’s likely a deeper issue at play.
- Fix any server issues. If your server has been overloaded recently, or if you otherwise suspect that server issues could be the root cause of your lack of indexing, focus on resolving those issues. Paying for a dedicated server, rather than a shared server, can resolve many issues, as can upgrading your service plan. Otherwise, tinkering with the settings and employing better protections against things like DDoS attacks can put you in a much better position. You’ll want to fix any server issues for your users as well as web crawlers, so they should remain one of your top priorities even after your pages are crawled and indexed.
- Separate your subdomains. If you have subdomains (such as one for your blog or different subdomains for different market segments), consider separating them. If Google views your website and all its subdomains as a single, massive website, it could deprioritize your website because of its bulky nature. Separating out your subdomains makes each subdomain more palatable for Google’s crawl budget.
- Eliminate and streamline redirects. Pay close attention to the redirects on your website. Redirects can be incredibly helpful, guiding users to appropriate content when there’s something missing or something broken. However, redirects aren’t always necessary, and some redirects negatively impact user experience. If you have any redirects set up for pages of your website with no backlinks or organic traffic, they could be doing more harm than good. Similarly, if any of your redirects aren’t especially relevant or valuable for user experience, it could be negatively impacting your campaign. Take a moment to audit your website redirects and consider eliminating and streamlining them. Make sure you only have redirects that genuinely add value to user experience and navigation.
- Track down and fix duplicate content. Duplicate content can be a significant problem for your website, and in more ways than one. Most websites with duplicate content didn’t duplicate that content intentionally; instead, this is usually some sort of unintended canonical issue. In any case, it’s imperative for you to track down and fix duplicate content issues, which you can resolve through the elimination of a page, the introduction of a canonical tag, or potentially the combination of multiple URLs.
- Examine your linking structure. Look at your linking structure as well. If you have too many nofollow links, it could inform search engines that a certain page of your website isn’t important; if that’s the case, it’s going to be deprioritized for crawling and indexing. Additionally, you should pay close attention to how you internally link your pages. Each page of your website should have at least one and preferably a few internal links, connecting it to other pages of your website like notes on the network. This can become a complicated exercise quickly, so prioritize clean, natural internal linking with each new page you create.
- Fix orphan pages. Orphan pages are pages of your website that have no internal links pointing to them. They’re hard for Google to recognize and understand, especially in the context of your other pages, so they should be a priority for resolution. Sometimes, the fix is as simple as including a couple of internal links pointing to the page. Other times, a better fix might be eliminating the page and incorporating it into a different page entirely.
- Address content quality issues. We’ve mentioned before that content quality issues could be holding back your strategy. As you’re probably aware, content quality issues will affect your SEO strategy in more ways than just increasing the amount of time it takes for Google to index your pages. Accordingly, you should thoroughly screen your content for potential quality issues and work to address them. Content quality issues come in many forms, including lack of depth, lack of conciseness, lack of coherence, lack of relevance, lack of citations, and poor organizational structure. If you’re not sure what makes content “good” or “high quality” for SEO, consider educating yourself before proceeding; content quality is a topic too complex to fully explain here.
- Audit and build more backlinks. Finally, recognize that a dearth of backlinks could make Google view some of your pages as unimportant. The solution here is to audit your backlink profile and start building more backlinks to these internal pages. This is doubly valuable because each new backlink pointing to your website is going to boost your domain authority more broadly, supporting your entire website infrastructure in the process. Backlinks can be expensive and time-consuming to build, so exercise patience as you work to make your website more worthy of Google’s crawl budget.
It’s not just you.
It feels disheartening to see a message like “Discovered – currently not indexed,” even if it’s just a temporary one.
Has Google forsaken us?
What did we do wrong?
These types of questions used to keep us up at night. But with more SEO experience, we’ve learned to accept ambiguities and work diligently to resolve them.
If you need help sorting out an indexing issue, if you need some extra backlink building support, or if you need just about anything related to SEO and digital marketing, we’ve got your back. Contact us to learn more today!
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