Introduction
Page indexing health is fundamental to SEO success. The Page indexing report in Google Search Console shows how many URLs on your site have been crawled and indexed by Google. However, understanding what “not indexed” actually means—and more importantly, what actions you should take—requires careful analysis based on Google’s official guidance.
Understanding NOT INDEXED URLs: What Google Actually Says
The Truth About NOT INDEXED Counts
NOT INDEXED URLs represent pages that are not indexed, either because of an indexing error or a legitimate reason (such as being blocked by robots.txt or being a duplicate page).
Critical Understanding: Google explicitly states: “Don’t expect totals here to match exactly your estimate of the number of URLs on your site. The indexed + not indexed totals above the chart are complete and accurate from Google’s perspective”.
NOT INDEXED Is Not Always a Problem
Google’s official guidance emphasizes: “Remember that Not indexed is not necessarily bad. Examine the reason given for not indexing a given URL”.
It’s perfectly acceptable for URLs not to be indexed for legitimate reasons—such as expected robots.txt rules, noindex tags, duplicate URLs, or 404 errors for pages you’ve removed with no replacement.
Learn more about the Page Indexing Report in Google Search Console.
Why Pages Aren’t Indexed: The Official Categories
The reasons why URLs weren’t indexed are listed in the “Why pages aren’t indexed” table in Google Search Console. Each reason should be evaluated individually to determine whether it requires action.
Category 1: Explicitly Blocked from Indexing
Examples:
- Excluded by noindex tag
- Blocked by robots.txt
Google’s Guidance: These pages are blocked intentionally. Verify that these exclusions are expected and legitimate.
Category 2: Technical Server Issues
Examples:
- Server error (5xx)
- Blocked due to unauthorized request (401)
- Blocked due to access forbidden (403)
Google’s Guidance: Google recommends keeping the number of server errors low by monitoring the Crawl Errors report.
Category 3: URLs That No Longer Exist or Have Moved
Examples:
- Not found (404)
- Page with redirect
Google’s Guidance: Google recommends fixing only 404 errors that you link to yourself or list in a sitemap. If a page has been moved, you should return a 3XX redirect to the new page.
Category 4: Duplicate or Canonical Issues
Examples:
- Alternative page with proper canonical tag
- Duplicate without user-selected canonical
- Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user
Google’s Guidance: Having duplicate content on your site is not a violation of spam policies, but search engines choose a single URL (the canonical URL) to show users per piece of content.
Category 5: Quality and Crawl Prioritization Issues
Examples:
- Crawled – currently not indexed
- Discovered – currently not indexed
Google’s Guidance: The message “Crawled – currently not indexed” doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a technical problem. Google may have crawled it just fine but decided it’s not valuable enough to include in their search results.
For “Discovered – currently not indexed,” Google explains this as part of “Google’s sophisticated balancing act with its crawling and indexing resources. Google then decides when and if to crawl and index the page”.
Category 6: Soft 404 Errors
A soft 404 error occurs when a URL returns a page telling the user that the page does not exist but also returns a 200 (success) status code. This is a bad practice because it tells search engines there’s a real page at that URL.
How to Analyze Non-Indexed URLs
Step 1: Export and Categorize
Process:
- Export each “Not Indexed” reason from Google Search Console
- Consolidate into a single spreadsheet with separate tabs for each reason
- Run HTTP status checks on all URLs
Why This Works: Google recommends reading the documentation for each specific reason to determine whether it’s something you should fix.
Step 2: Filter by HTTP Status Codes
Understanding HTTP status codes is critical. If the server responded with a 2xx status code, the content may be considered for indexing. However, an HTTP 2xx status code doesn’t guarantee indexing.
Filter Strategy:
- Focus on HTTP 200 URLs in categories like “Crawled – currently not indexed”
- Identify server errors (5xx) that need fixing
- Distinguish between intentional redirects (3xx) and problematic ones
Step 3: Analyze Historical Performance
Recommended Analysis:
- Check Search Console performance data for each non-indexed URL
- Identify URLs that previously received traffic or impressions
- Use this data to prioritize which URLs deserve attention
Google Search Console typically provides approximately 16 months of historical data, the optimal timeframe depends on your specific site’s update frequency and traffic patterns.
Step 4: Evaluate Internal Linking and Content Quality
For “Crawled – currently not indexed” and “Discovered – currently not indexed”:
Google’s guidance emphasizes evaluating the page’s value: “Take a critical look at the page in question. Is it truly informative and relevant to searchers? Sometimes, low-value pages simply aren’t worth prioritizing for indexing”.
The Critical Decision: When to Use 301 Redirects vs. 404/410 Status Codes
What Google Actually Recommends
Here’s what Google’s official documentation actually says:
Use 301 Redirects When:
If your page has moved or has a clear replacement on your site, return a 301 (permanent redirect) to redirect the user. This won’t interrupt their browsing experience and is a great way to tell search engines about the new location of the page.
When you remove a page, think about whether that content is moving somewhere else. If you’re moving that content to a new URL, you should 301 redirect the old URL to the new URL—that way when users come to the old URL looking for that content, they’ll be automatically redirected to something relevant.
Redirecting with 301 status 404 errors is a good idea when it’s helpful to users. For instance, if you notice that Search Console shows a 404 for a misspelled version of your URL, you can 301 redirect the misspelled version to the correct version.
Read more about HTTP Status Codes and how Google handles them.
Use 404 or 410 When:
If you removed the page and there’s no replacement page on your site with similar content, return a 404 (not found) or 410 (gone) response code.
If you’re getting rid of that content entirely and don’t have anything on your site that would fill the same user need, then the old URL should return a 404 or 410.
404 vs. 410: Does It Matter?
Google explicitly states: “Currently Google treats 410 (Gone) the same as 404 (Not found), so it’s immaterial to us whether you return one or the other”.
The Correct Decision Framework
Decision Tree:
- Does a suitable replacement page exist?
- YES → Use 301 redirect
- NO → Go to step 2
- Is the content permanently removed with no equivalent?
- YES → Use 404 or 410
- NO → Reconsider if a replacement truly exists
Google’s decision framework is based on whether there’s a replacement page, not on the presence of external links. The proper question is: “Is there somewhere relevant to send users?” not “Does this have backlinks?”
Understanding Crawl Budget: When It Matters (And When It Doesn’t)
Who Needs to Worry About Crawl Budget?
Google explicitly states: “Crawl budget is not something most publishers have to worry about. If new pages tend to be crawled the same day they’re published, crawl budget is not something webmasters need to focus on. Likewise, if a site has fewer than a few thousand URLs, most of the time it will be crawled efficiently”.
When Crawl Budget Becomes Important
Crawl budget optimization matters for very large and frequently updated sites. If your site does not have a large number of pages that change rapidly, or if your pages seem to be crawled the same day they’re published, merely keeping your sitemap up to date and checking your index coverage regularly is adequate.
Sites that should pay attention include: medium or larger sites (10,000+ unique pages) with very rapidly changing content (daily), or sites with a large portion of their total URLs classified as “Discovered – currently not indexed”.
Learn more about Crawl Budget Management for Large Sites.
What Affects Crawl Budget
Crawl budget is determined by two main elements: crawl capacity limit and crawl demand.
Crawl Capacity Factors:
- Crawl health: If the site responds quickly, the limit goes up. If it slows down or responds with server errors, the limit goes down
- Google’s crawling limits: Google has limited resources and must make choices
Crawl Demand Factors:
- Popularity: URLs that are more popular on the Internet tend to be crawled more often
- Staleness: Google’s systems attempt to prevent URLs from becoming stale in the index
How to Optimize Crawl Budget
According to Google’s analysis, having many low-value-add URLs can negatively affect a site’s crawling and indexing.
Google’s Recommendations:
- Prevent Large Unimportant Resources: Use robots.txt to prevent large but unimportant resources from being loaded by Googlebot. Be sure to block only non-critical resources that aren’t important to understanding the meaning of the page.
- Improve Page Speed: If your server responds to requests quicker, Google might be able to crawl more pages on your site. However, Google only wants to crawl high-quality content, so simply making low-quality pages faster won’t encourage Googlebot to crawl more of your site.
- Avoid Long Redirect Chains: Watch out for long redirect chains, which have a negative effect on crawling.
- Manage Faceted Navigation: Faceted navigation can generate infinite URL spaces which harms websites through overcrawling and slower discovery crawls. If you don’t need faceted navigation URLs potentially indexed, prevent crawling of these URLs.
Special Considerations for Large Sites
The Discovered – Currently Not Indexed Challenge
Sites with a large portion of their total URLs classified as “Discovered – currently not indexed” should pay particular attention to crawl budget optimization.
This status indicates that Google has found the URL but hasn’t crawled the content of the page itself—it just knows the URL exists. Google then decides when and if to crawl and index the page based on crawl capacity and perceived value.
URL Parameters and Infinite Spaces
Infinite crawl spaces waste bandwidth. Examples include calendars linking to infinite past or future dates, or paginated data that returns a 200 status code for non-existent pages.
For faceted navigation specifically: if you don’t need these URLs potentially indexed, prevent crawling. If you do need them indexed, ensure URLs follow best practices like using standard URL parameter separators (&) and returning HTTP 404 when filter combinations don’t return results.
The Validation Process
How to Request Validation
Once you’ve fixed issues, you can request validation through Google Search Console. Validation will restart for all URLs marked Pending or Failed, plus any new instances discovered through normal crawling.
Timeline Expectations
Validation typically takes up to about two weeks, but in some cases can take much longer. Wait for a validation cycle to complete before requesting another cycle, even if you have fixed some issues during the current cycle.
Every change you make will take some time to be reflected on Google’s end. Some changes might take effect in a few hours, others could take several months. In general, you likely want to wait a few weeks to assess whether your work had beneficial effects.
Practical Action Plan: What to Actually Do
Priority 1: Fix Technical Errors
Focus on:
- Server errors (5xx)
- Soft 404s
- Broken internal links to 404 pages you control
Why: Google recommends keeping the number of server errors low and fixing 404 errors that you link to yourself.
Priority 2: Evaluate Quality Issues
For “Crawled – currently not indexed”:
Google’s guidance is clear: “Focus on high-quality content instead of trying to game the system. This will naturally improve your website’s overall value in Google’s eyes”.
Actions:
- Evaluate whether the page is truly informative and relevant to searchers
- Consider consolidating duplicate content into a single, stronger page
- Improve internal linking to important pages
Priority 3: Clean Up Redirect Chains
For pages that have moved: return a 301 permanent redirect to redirect the user to the new location.
Important: Avoid long redirect chains as they have a negative effect on crawling.
Priority 4: Optimize for Large Sites
If your site has 10,000+ pages:
- Address faceted navigation issues by preventing crawling of unnecessary parameter combinations
- Rein in infinite spaces like calendars or excessive pagination
- Improve page speed and server response times
Learn more about 301 Redirects and Google Search.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Mistake 1: Redirecting Everything to the Homepage
Google considers redirects to the homepage “soft 404” errors and treats them the same as if the server returned a 404 status.
Mistake 2: Trying to Index Low-Value Pages
Even a well-written and functional page might not get indexed if Google decides it’s not valuable enough. There’s no magic bullet to fix this.
Mistake 3: Worrying About Crawl Budget Unnecessarily
If new pages are crawled the same day they’re published, or your site has fewer than a few thousand URLs, crawl budget is not something you need to focus on.
Mistake 4: Using 410 Instead of 301 When Replacements Exist
The decision between 404/410 and 301 should be based on whether a suitable replacement exists, not on whether the page has backlinks. If content is moving to a new URL, use 301 redirect.
Tools and Verification
URL Inspection Tool
The URL Inspection tool provides information about Google’s indexed version of a specific page and allows you to test whether a page might be indexable.
Use it to:
- See the status of a URL in the Google index
- See why Google could or couldn’t index your page
- Test whether a page on your site might be indexable
- Request that a URL be crawled by Google
Sitemap Submission
To make sure Google knows about all the pages on your site, it’s a good idea to create and submit a sitemap. This helps Google crawl and index pages you might not discover through normal crawling.
Conclusion
Managing page indexing health requires understanding Google’s actual guidelines rather than relying on generalized advice. The key principles are:
- Not all non-indexed URLs are problems – Examine the reason for non-indexing and determine if it’s something you should fix
- Focus on quality over quantity – High-quality content that deserves to be indexed will naturally improve your site’s value
- Use correct HTTP status codes – Return 301 redirects when content has moved, and 404/410 when content is permanently gone with no replacement
- Most sites don’t need to worry about crawl budget – Only very large, rapidly updating sites need to actively manage crawl budget
By following Google’s official guidance rather than oversimplified rules of thumb, you can make informed decisions about which indexing issues actually require attention and which are working as intended.
References
All information in this guide is sourced from official Google documentation:
