How To Fix “Discovered – currently not indexed”

“Discovered – currently not indexed” is a common issue that website owners struggle with. It means that Google knows about the specific URL, but it has not yet crawled or indexed it. This can be so frustrating since the specific page will not appear on search results, which also means no organic traffic for that specific URL. In this article, we provide a simple guide on how to fix the “discovered – currently not indexed” issue.

How to Fix “Discovered – Currently Not Indexed”

The solution to this issue will depend on the cause. You will need to diagnose and fix the “Discovered – Currently Not Indexed” issue. This may include actions such as fixing the quality of your content, following internal links best practices, fixing redirects, and more.

Request Indexing

When only a few pages have the “Discovered – currently not indexed” error, you can request Google to index the pages using the Google Search Console (GSC). Click the URL inspection tab on the menu of the GSC. Then enter the page’s URL and if it is not currently indexed click on the “Request Indexing” button.

You will receive a message indicating that Google has added the URL to the priority crawl queue. If this does not work, it means that there may be an underlying issue you need to fix before requesting indexing again.

Check Crawl Budget Issues

Crawl budget refers to how fast and how many pages a search engine is willing to crawl your website. You may see the “Discovered – currently not indexed” issue if the crawlable URLs exceed your crawl budget. This may occur in larger sites due to technical setups, problems, or mistakes. Common causes of this problem include:

• Orphan Pages:When the only way to discover new pages on your website is from the sitemap without any internal links, Google may consider it unimportant. Linking such pages can aid in getting them indexed.
• Serving content from subdomains: If your main website is on url.com, but you also have assets on a subdomain like cdn.url.com, Google may consider the subdomain as part of your main website, grouping them together for the crawl budget. You can solve this issue by serving assets from the subdomain with a separate crawl budget.
• Duplicate Content:When your website has exact or near copies of pages accessible at multiple URLs, Google classifies them as duplicate content. This may include the same pages accessible at www and non-www versions of your website, empty category or product pages with boilerplate content, or staging and development instances.
• Unnecessary Redirects:When removing pages from a website, we normally add a redirect to another relevant page. However, redirects are not always necessary unless the page has traffic or backlinks. Otherwise, it is better to replace internal links to the deleted page and return a 404 to avoid having a “Discovered – currently not indexed” issue related to that page.
• Internal Nofollow Links: Although nofollow linkswill not prevent the page from being indexed, they internally tell the search engines that a page is not important. You can use a site audit to determine if a page has nofollow links and replace them with followed ones.

Check Content Quality Issues

Since Google does not index everything it discovers on your website, pages with low-quality or duplicate content may not be indexed. Based on other pages that Google has crawled, it can determine whether a page is important and if not deprioritize crawling. Some of the types of content that Google may discover but not index include:

• AI-Generated Content:While AI writing tools help in creating content quickly, the quality may be poor without human involvement.
• Machine-Translated Content: Auto-translated content may be far from perfect, and may not reflect the needs of the local audience, making them irrelevant to searchers.
• Thin Content: These are pages without enough unique content, which makes them less useful compared to others that Google has already crawled.
• Spun Content: Using software to rewrite content may result in plagiarized and low content that will not rank on Google.

The approach used to solve these issues will depend on the specific cause. For instance, you can merge thin content to create something more useful or delete the page altogether.

Check Backlinks

One of the signals that Google uses to decide whether a page with worthy of crawling is backlinks. Pages with no or few high-quality backlinks may be deprioritized for crawling. While getting backlinks may be a difficult task, it helps in letting Google discover and index your pages.

Hire an Expert to Resolve The “Discovered – Currently Not Indexed” Issue

Your website not showing up in Google search results can be frustrating. While there are many possible causes for this, the “Discovered – Currently Not Indexed” Issue is quite common. Fixing this issue may be difficult or take up much of your time. At Octopus Tech, we help brands succeed online through several services including web design. Get in touch with us to make sure your website is properly indexed and all issues are properly addressed.