Which Search Console page indexing statuses need cleaning, and in which order?
What does this page cover?
The page indexing report in Google Search Console sorts every known URL by status. Some statuses report a real problem, others only describe a normal state.
Each case below starts from the exact status name, explains it from Google's documentation and leads to a prompt that finds the cause on a specific site.
Which page indexing statuses appear in Search Console?
- Alternate page with proper canonical tag What does alternate page with proper canonical tag mean in Search Console?
- Blocked due to access forbidden (403) Why does Googlebot receive access forbidden (403) on pages meant for search?
- Blocked due to unauthorized request (401) Why does Search Console report a page blocked due to an unauthorized request (401)?
- Crawled - currently not indexed Why does Google crawl a page and keep it out of the index for the moment?
- Discovered - currently not indexed Why does Google know a URL and postpone crawling it in Search Console?
- Duplicate without user-selected canonical Which URL does Google index when duplicates lack a user-selected canonical?
- Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user Why does Google choose a different canonical than the one declared on the page?
- Google reads everything Under what circumstances does Google read content inside JavaScript, images, PDFs and video?
- Indexed, though blocked by robots.txt How does a page get indexed although robots.txt blocks it, and how to clean it up?
- Not found (404) When does a 404 in the Search Console page indexing report need cleaning up?
- Orphan landing pages Why do orphan pages and microsites with weak internal links get found late by Google?
- Page indexed without content Why does Google index a page whose content it is unable to read?
- Page with redirect Why does Search Console list a page with redirect among the pages left out of the index?
- Redirect error Why does Search Console flag a redirect error, and which redirect chain causes it?
- Server error (5xx) Why does Search Console report a server error (5xx) for pages Googlebot tried to crawl?
- Soft 404 Why does Google treat a page as a soft 404 when the server answers with success?
- URL blocked by robots.txt What does a URL blocked by robots.txt mean for indexing in Google Search Console?
- URL blocked due to other 4xx issue Which pages end up as URL blocked due to other 4xx issue in Search Console?
- URL marked ‘noindex’ Why does Search Console list a URL marked noindex, and when is that intended?