Indexing and technical SEO
Page indexing report in Google Search Console: what each status means
The report labels every URL Indexed or Not indexed and gives a reason for each non-indexed one. Most reasons are not errors, and the goal is the canonical version of every important page, not 100 percent coverage.
Checked against Google Search Console Help · October 2026
Short answer
Open the Page indexing report, read each reason in the Why pages aren’t indexed table together with its Source, and decide against your goal whether it needs action. Only issues whose source is Website are yours to fix. Duplicate and alternate pages usually mean Google found the canonical page, which is good.
Every reason below is described on Google’s Page indexing report help page ↗ .
How to work through the report
The steps follow Google’s own guidance.
Start from the summary
The summary graph counts Indexed and Not indexed pages, and the Why pages aren’t indexed table lists the reasons. Click a row to see the affected URLs and the history.
Read the reason and the Source
The Source says whether the cause is Google or the website. In general you can fix only issues whose source is Website.
Judge it against your goal
Ideally the count of indexed pages grows with the site. You should not expect every URL to be indexed, only the canonical pages. A page marked duplicate or alternate is usually fine.
Inspect an example URL
Open the URL Inspection tool from the example row, look at the crawl and indexing details, and run the live test to see the current state.
Fix every instance, then validate
Fix all instances of the issue, then click Validate fix once. Validation typically takes up to about two weeks and stops if one instance remains.
Filter by sitemap
Filter the report by a sitemap that holds your important pages to see how many of them are indexed and to validate a smaller set faster.
What the common reasons mean
Your server returned a 500-level error when the page was requested.
A redirect chain that was too long, a loop, a redirect URL over the maximum length, or a bad or empty URL in the chain.
The page was blocked, but that does not guarantee it stays out of the index. To keep a page out, remove the block and use noindex.
Google saw a noindex directive and did not index the page. If you want it indexed, remove the tag or header.
The page shows a friendly not-found message without a 404 status. Return a real 404 for pages that are gone, or add real content to a page that should exist.
The URL returned 404 and Google found it through a link or because it existed before. It is not necessarily a problem if the page was removed without replacement; if it moved, use a 301.
Googlebot does not log in, so a page behind authorization or returning 403 to it will not be indexed.
Google crawled the page and did not index it. It may or may not be indexed later, and there is no need to resubmit the URL.
Google found the URL but has not crawled it; typically it expected the crawl to overload the site and rescheduled it, which is why the last crawl date is empty.
The page correctly points to an indexed canonical page, so nothing needs doing.
Google chose another page as canonical. This is working as intended; mark the canonical yourself if you think the choice is wrong.
Google thinks your declared canonical is not similar enough to the page and picked another URL. Compare the three pages in the URL Inspection tool.
A non-canonical URL that redirects is not indexed; its target may or may not be.
The page was indexed from information on other pages although robots.txt blocks crawling; use noindex rather than robots.txt to keep a page out.
INDEXING
Do not chase 100 percent coverage
Google says you should not expect all URLs to be indexed, only the canonical pages, and that immediate indexing is not to be expected: new content can take a few days. The status names here, Indexed and Not indexed with a reason, come from the current report; guides that talk about the categories Error, Valid with warning, Valid and Excluded describe a layout that this page does not use.
Reading the numbers in SEOKit
The workspace’s URL Inspection report and Index Tracker record the same kind of verdict for the URLs you choose, over time, so you can see when a page drops out or comes back. The examples table in Search Console lists at most 1,000 URLs per reason, so use a sitemap filter or the API when you need more.
Common mistakes
Do not treat every Not indexed URL as an error
Many reasons are legitimate: redirects, duplicates, pages you blocked on purpose.
Do not use robots.txt to keep a page out of the index
Use noindex and let Google crawl the page to see it.
Do not press Validate fix again while validation is running
Wait until it succeeds or fails.