Written by ryanchristian Google Search Console is a great tool anyone who has a website can use for free, to see what pages on your website are added to Google’s Index.
If your pages are in Google’s Index, they will be served when relevant search queries are entered into Google Search. With Google Search Console, you can see breakdowns of which pages are indexed, and which pages aren’t and why they aren’t.
This guide is meant to explain the indexing categories you’ll see when using Google Search Console, what they mean, how you can fix them, or if they even need to be fixed!
The indexing report will become available in Google Search Console, once you’ve created a property for your website and have verified ownership, have added your sitemap, and Google has crawled your site.
What is search crawling and indexing?
“The terms ‘crawl’ and ‘index’ are often used interchangeably, although they are different (but closely related) actions.”
Crawling: Google uses a crawler, called Googlebot, to visit discovered URL’s and download text, images, and videos it finds on your pages. Googlebot doesn’t crawl all the pages it discovered. Some pages may be disallowed for crawling by the site owner, other pages may not be accessible without logging in to the site. Learn more
Indexing: After a page is crawled, Google tries to understand what the page is about. This stage is called indexing and it includes processing and analyzing the textual content and key content tags and attributes, such as <title> elements and alt attributes, images, videos, and more. Learn more
For a full breakdown on these stages and their definitions, please refer to Google’s guide on How Search Works.
Accessing the Indexing Report
- Once you’ve logged into Google Search Console, select the appropriate property using the dropdown menu in the top left corner of the dashboard.
- Then, in the right hand pane, click on the “Pages” option in the “Indexing” section.
- You will then be brought to a section with a graph-like representation of your pages and their indexing status. This will show you how many pages are valid and indexed, how many pages are excluded, and how many pages have errors. Pages with errors will not be indexed.
Below this graph will be a list of error categories, showing you the error type and how many pages are affected. It also offers a column to show validation status when errors are fixed, and you begin the validation process. We’ll get into that later!
What to look for:
✅ Ideally you should see a gradually increasing count of indexed pages as your site grows. If you see drops or spikes, it may be time to investigate.
✅ Your goal is to get the canonical version of every important page indexed. Duplicate or alternate pages shouldn’t be indexed.
✅ Having a page marked duplicate or alternate is usually a good thing; it means that Google has found the canonical page and indexed it.
What not to look for:
🚫 You should not expect all URLs on a large site to be indexed.
🚫 Your goal is to get all your critical pages indexed, and the canonical versions of your pages. (You can find the canonical for any URL by running the URL Inspection tool.)
How long indexing typically takes:
When you add new content, it can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks for Google to index it. You can reduce the indexing lag by asking Google to recrawl your URLs.
Google Search Console Errors: What They Mean
Let’s go over some of the common errors you will see in the list of error categories:
Server error (5xx)
A server error means that Googlebot couldn’t access your URL, the request timed out, or your site was busy. As a result, Googlebot was forced to abandon the request. With this error, use the URL inspection tool to conduct a live test, and ensure the page is loading. If it is, Google should pick it up on the next crawl.
Redirect error
This is usually caused by a redirect loop or redirect chain. Google will want to index the canonical, destination URL that these URL’s forward to.
URL marked ‘noindex’
When Google tried to index the page it encountered a ‘noindex’ tag and therefore did not index it. If you do want this page to be indexed, you should remove the ‘noindex’ tag. This can be done via the SEO tools “Visibility” tab in the page editor.
Not found (404)
This means that there is not an existing page for the crawled URL address. This could be due to changing the URL on the page, or the page was deleted with no replacement. 404 responses are not necessarily a problem, if the page has been removed without any replacement. If your page has moved, use a 301 redirect to the new relevant location.
Blocked due to access forbidden (403)
These typically pop up for pages that require logins, or backend links that are firewalled and should remain that way.
Crawled – currently not indexed
The page was crawled by Google but not indexed. It may or may not be indexed in the future; no need to resubmit this URL for crawling.
Discovered – currently not indexed
The page was found by Google, but hasn’t been crawled yet. This is typically due to Googlebot going to crawl the page, but assuming it would overload the site, so it rescheduled the crawl.
Page with redirect
This is a non-canonical URL that redirects to another page. As such, this URL will not be indexed. The target URL of the redirect might or might not be indexed, depending on if Google has deemed it indexable.
Alternate page with proper canonical tag
This page is marked as an alternate of another page (EX: a mobile version of a desktop canonical). This page correctly points to the canonical page, which is indexed, so there is nothing you need to do. Alternate language pages are not detected by Search Console.
Duplicate without user-selected canonical
This page is a duplicate of another page, although it doesn’t indicate a preferred canonical page. Google has chosen the other page as the canonical for this page, and so will not serve this page in Search. You can Inspect this URL to see which URL Google considers canonical for this page. This is not an error, but is working as intended, because Google does not serve duplicate pages. If you think that this page is not a duplicate of the Google-chosen canonical, you should ensure that the content differs substantially between the two pages.
Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user
This page is marked as canonical for a set of pages, but Google thinks another URL makes a better canonical. Google has indexed the page that they consider canonical rather than this one.
Learn more about navigating Google’s Page Indexing report
For a more comprehensive breakdown of all of these, or to report an indexing problem to Google, please refer to these helpful resources:
- Google’s guide on navigating the Page Indexing report – via Google Search Console Help
- Debugging drops in Google Search traffic – via Google Search Central
- 3 underutilized Google Search Console reports for diagnosing traffic drops – via Search Engine Land
Conclusion
Google Search Console is a handy tool that can provide a lot of information, but don’t let it stress you out!
If your site is new, patience is key as it will take a few days for those pages to make their way into Google.
If your site is small, or doesn’t have new content added to it regularly, chances are you may not need this report as there are other ways to check if your pages are indexed.
If you have a large site (500+ pages) and add to it regularly, this report can be very useful to you.
If you decide to use Google Search Console, you should only check it monthly or when you make a lot of changes to your site. When you do, look for an increasing number of indexed pages as your site grows, and be mindful of spikes in not indexed pages. If you see a spike in not indexed pages, investigate to ensure that it is for good reason.
You can check Google to see all indexed pages on a site by searching:
Site:www.yourdomainname.com