Why Is My Page Not Indexed? Every Search Console Reason and Its Fix

If you are asking "why is my page not indexed", Google has usually answered already. Inspect the URL in Search Console. When the verdict is "URL is not on Google", the Page indexing section names the reason. ^{[2]Google Search Console Help. URL Inspection tool} Every reason belongs to one of four groups: not crawled or not kept, could not be fetched, blocked by you, or replaced by another URL.

Two facts frame everything below. Google does not guarantee that it will crawl, index or serve a page, even one that follows its guidelines. ^{[3]Google Search Central. In-depth guide to how Google Search works} And not indexed is often correct: Google says you should not expect every URL on a site to be indexed, only the canonical version of each important page. ^{[1]Google Search Console Help. Page indexing report}

Why is my page not indexed? Read the reason before you change anything

The URL Inspection tool answers the question for one page.

1. Inspect the URL and read the verdict. "URL is not on Google" means the URL can't appear in Search results. ^{[2]Google Search Console Help. URL Inspection tool}
2. Read Indexing status. It says the page is not indexed and gives a reason, or it says "URL is unknown to Google", which means Google hasn't seen this URL before. ^{[2]Google Search Console Help. URL Inspection tool}
3. Read the crawl fields. "Crawl allowed?" reports a robots.txt block, "Page fetch" reports whether Google could get the page from your server, and "Indexing allowed?" reports whether the page disallowed indexing. ^{[2]Google Search Console Help. URL Inspection tool}
4. Compare the canonicals. "User-declared canonical" is your choice and "Google-selected canonical" is Google's. ^{[2]Google Search Console Help. URL Inspection tool}

What you see is Google's most recently indexed version, not the live page. ^{[2]Google Search Console Help. URL Inspection tool} The four ways to confirm the status, including the site: search, are in how to check if a page is indexed.

Find the reason for every page not indexed by Google

For the whole site, the Page indexing report groups every not-indexed URL under its reason. Two details decide where to start. Each reason has a Source value that shows whether the issue comes from the website or from Google, and Google says that in general you can fix only the ones listed as Website. ^{[1]Google Search Console Help. Page indexing report} And the example list behind each reason is limited to 1,000 rows, so it is a sample on a large site. ^{[1]Google Search Console Help. Page indexing report}

On a site with fewer than 500 pages, Google says you probably don't need the report and suggests a site: search for your key pages instead. ^{[1]Google Search Console Help. Page indexing report}

Every Search Console reason, its cause and its fix

The labels below are the ones Google's help page for the report uses, and the explanations and fixes are Google's own. ^{[1]Google Search Console Help. Page indexing report}

Google has not crawled the page, or crawled it and did not keep it

URL is unknown to Google. Google has to find a URL before anything else can happen. It can discover links only if they are <a> elements with an href attribute, so a page reachable only through a script-driven button may never be found. ^{[11]Google Search Central. Understand JavaScript SEO basics} Link the page from pages Google already crawls, and list it in a sitemap; how to submit a sitemap to Google covers the steps. Then wait: Google says it can take a week or so to start crawling and indexing a new page or site. ^{[1]Google Search Console Help. Page indexing report}

Discovered - currently not indexed. Google's explanation is specific: it wanted to crawl the URL, expected the crawl to overload the site, and rescheduled it. ^{[1]Google Search Console Help. Page indexing report} The help page gives no fix. Once a URL is known, it can take up to a few weeks before Google crawls it. ^{[1]Google Search Console Help. Page indexing report} If your server is slow or returning errors, fix that first, because server errors make Google slow down its crawling. ^{[6]Google Search Central. How HTTP status codes, and network and DNS errors affect Google Search}

Crawled - currently not indexed. Google calls this a common message that doesn't necessarily indicate an issue that needs attention, because it doesn't index all pages across the web. ^{[1]Google Search Console Help. Page indexing report} When the page matters, look at the three indexing issues Google names: low content quality, robots meta rules, and a site design that makes indexing difficult. ^{[3]Google Search Central. In-depth guide to how Google Search works} On a JavaScript site, check the rendered HTML too. If the content isn't visible there, Google won't be able to index it. ^{[11]Google Search Central. Understand JavaScript SEO basics} Why a new request rarely changes this status is explained in how to request indexing. Pages nothing links to are a frequent case, and internal links to underperforming pages shows how to add them.

Google could not fetch the page: server errors, 404s, 401s and redirects

Google doesn't index URLs that return a 4xx status code, and URLs that are already indexed and return one are removed from the index. ^{[6]Google Search Central. How HTTP status codes, and network and DNS errors affect Google Search} That makes the status code the first thing to check when a page that used to rank disappears.

• Server error (5xx). Indexed URLs are preserved at first but eventually dropped, and URLs that persistently return a server error are removed from the index. ^{[6]Google Search Central. How HTTP status codes, and network and DNS errors affect Google Search} Google's checklist: look at host availability in the Crawl Stats report, make sure the server is not down, overloaded or misconfigured, and check that a firewall or DoS protection is not blocking Google. ^{[1]Google Search Console Help. Page indexing report}
• Not found (404). Not necessarily a problem when the page was removed without a replacement. If it moved, use a 301 redirect. Google recommends fixing only the 404s you link to yourself or list in a sitemap. ^{[1]Google Search Console Help. Page indexing report}
• 401 and 403. Googlebot never provides credentials. ^{[1]Google Search Console Help. Page indexing report} A page behind a login, or behind a rule that rejects unknown visitors, stays out. You can confirm a 401 by opening the page in incognito mode. ^{[1]Google Search Console Help. Page indexing report}
• Redirect error. Google follows up to 10 redirect hops by default. ^{[6]Google Search Central. How HTTP status codes, and network and DNS errors affect Google Search} Shorten the chain so the old URL points straight at the final one.
• Page with redirect. Working as intended. The redirecting URL will not be indexed; its target might or might not be, so inspect the target. ^{[1]Google Search Console Help. Page indexing report}

You blocked it: robots.txt, noindex and soft 404

URL marked 'noindex'. If you want the page indexed, you must remove the tag or the HTTP header. ^{[1]Google Search Console Help. Page indexing report} The rule exists in two forms, a <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> tag and an X-Robots-Tag: noindex response header, so check the response headers as well as the HTML. ^{[4]Google Search Central. Block Search indexing with noindex} Then run Test live URL, check "Indexing allowed?" and request indexing. ^{[1]Google Search Console Help. Page indexing report}

URL blocked by robots.txt. Remove the rule if the page should rank. If your aim was to keep the page out of Google, the block is the wrong tool: Google says robots.txt is not a mechanism for keeping a web page out of Google, and a disallowed page can still be indexed if other sites link to it. ^{[5]Google Search Central. Introduction to robots.txt}

The thing people get wrong: adding a noindex tag and a robots.txt block to the same page. A blocked page is never crawled, so Google never sees the noindex rule, and the page can still appear in search results. ^{[4]Google Search Central. Block Search indexing with noindex} To keep a page out, allow the crawl and use noindex alone.

Soft 404. The page tells visitors it does not exist while returning a 200 status code, or it has no main content. ^{[7]Google Search Central. Troubleshoot Google Search crawling errors} If the content is gone, return a 404 or 410. If it moved, return a 301. ^{[7]Google Search Central. Troubleshoot Google Search crawling errors} If the page is real, it probably did not load properly for Googlebot or was missing critical resources; use URL Inspection to examine the rendered content. ^{[7]Google Search Central. Troubleshoot Google Search crawling errors}

Google indexed another URL instead: duplicates and canonicals

These three reasons mean a different URL holds the place in the index. Google says a page marked duplicate or alternate is usually a good thing, because it found the canonical page and indexed it. ^{[1]Google Search Console Help. Page indexing report}

• Alternate page with proper canonical tag. Your canonical tag was respected. There is nothing you need to do. ^{[1]Google Search Console Help. Page indexing report}
• Duplicate without user-selected canonical. Google picked a canonical because you declared none. If it kept the wrong URL, mark the canonical explicitly. If the page is not really a duplicate, make its content differ substantially. ^{[1]Google Search Console Help. Page indexing report}
• Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user. You declared a canonical and Google preferred another URL. A canonical preference is a hint, not a rule. ^{[9]Google Search Central. What is canonicalization} Redirects and rel="canonical" annotations are strong signals, sitemap inclusion is a weak one, and they become more effective when combined. ^{[8]Google Search Central. How to specify a canonical URL with rel="canonical" and other methods} The diagnosis is in why Google chooses a different canonical URL.

A worked example: 12 not-indexed posts from one sitemap

The figures below are constructed to illustrate the triage, not taken from a real property. Imagine an SEO blog whose post sitemap has 12 URLs under Not indexed.

Seven of the 12 are fixed on the site in an afternoon. The noindex group comes first, because one template change brings back three posts. The five crawled posts get the slow work, and three of them may never be indexed. That is an acceptable result.

Fixed it? Validate the fix and request indexing

For one page, run Test live URL and request indexing. A page that passes a quick check is submitted to the indexing queue, and a request does not guarantee that it appears in the index. ^{[2]Google Search Console Help. URL Inspection tool} Asking again does not help: requesting a recrawl several times for the same URL won't get it crawled any faster. ^{[10]Google Search Central. Ask Google to recrawl your URLs} A clean live test is not a promise either, because it cannot check for duplicates or for quality. ^{[2]Google Search Console Help. URL Inspection tool}

For a whole group, open the reason in the Page indexing report and click Validate fix, once. Google immediately checks a few pages and queues the rest, and validation typically takes up to about two weeks. ^{[1]Google Search Console Help. Page indexing report} It stops when Google finds a single remaining instance, so fix every affected URL first. ^{[1]Google Search Console Help. Page indexing report} Validation is optional; Google can detect fixed pages without it. ^{[1]Google Search Console Help. Page indexing report}

What to do in Search Console now

1. Inspect the URL and write down the reason and the two canonical values.
2. Find the reason in the table above and decide: fix, or leave.
3. Fix Website-source reasons first, starting with the one that affects the most important pages.
4. Test the live URL, request indexing for single pages, and validate the fix for groups.
5. Check back after two weeks. An indexed page still has to earn impressions, and that is a ranking question, not an indexing one.

Working through a large site one URL at a time is slow. Our Google index checker inspects your URLs through the official URL Inspection API after a read-only Google sign-in, groups every page by the reason Google gives, and ranks the groups by the traffic at stake.