Crawled, currently not indexed: what it means and how to fix it

Google’s Page indexing report gives this definition: “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.” The page was reachable and readable. It was simply not chosen.

Google does not index every page it reads. Four reasons account for most pages with this status.

• The page is thin: a few lines, a list of links, or a template with little on it.
• The page repeats another page on the same site, or says what many other sites already say.
• Nothing on the site links to it, which tells Google the site itself does not think it matters.
• The site is new or little known, and Google is indexing only its strongest pages so far.

Many addresses with this status were never meant to be found: feeds, filtered lists, search results, old tag pages. Those can stay out. Open the report, read the list, and mark only the pages a customer should be able to find.

The fixes follow from the causes.

1. Make the page complete. Answer the question it exists for, fully, in words that are not on any other page of the site.
2. Merge near-duplicates. Two weak pages on one subject become one strong page, with a redirect from the address that goes.
3. Link to it. Add links from the home page, the menu or the most visited related pages.
4. List it in the sitemap, with the correct address.
5. Then request indexing once, through the URL Inspection tool.

Requesting indexing every day, changing a word or two, and adding the address to more sitemaps do not change Google’s judgement of the page. The status is about the page’s content and standing, and only changes to those move it.

Inspect the address again after a few weeks. The other statuses a page can carry are covered in why your website is not showing up on Google, and the closely named Discovered, currently not indexed is a different problem with a different fix.