Discovered - currently not indexed: what it means and what to do

What the status means

• Found, not crawled. “The page was found by Google, but not crawled yet.”[1]
• Put off, not refused. “Typically, Google wanted to crawl the URL but this was expected to overload the site; therefore Google rescheduled the crawl.”[1]
• No crawl date. That is why the last crawl date is empty in the report.[1]

Discovered or crawled: the difference

• Discovered - currently not indexed. Google has the address and has not crawled the page.[1]
• Crawled - currently not indexed. Google crawled the page and did not index it. Google says it does not index every page on the web, so this is a common message for many sites and does not necessarily point to an issue that needs attention.[1]

How long it lasts

Google gives no fixed time. It says crawling can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, and that asking for a crawl does not guarantee the page is included in search results instantly, or at all.[2]

What to do

• A few pages: ask for a crawl. Inspect the address with URL Inspection and click Request indexing.[2][4] You must be an owner or a full user of the property.[2] There is a quota, and asking again for the same address does not get it crawled faster.[2]
• Many pages: submit a sitemap. Google says to submit a sitemap when you have large numbers of addresses,[2] with updated pages marked by lastmod.[4]
• Then watch. Google says to be patient and to follow progress in its indexing report or with URL Inspection.[2]

When a large share of your pages has this status

Google’s crawl budget guide names the kinds of site it is written for. One is a site with a large portion of its addresses classed as “Discovered - currently not indexed”.[3] Its advice for such a site includes:[3]

• Consolidate duplicate content, so crawling goes to unique content.[3]
• Block with robots.txt the pages you do not want Google to crawl at all.[3]
• Return a 404 or 410 status for pages you removed for good.[3]
• Remove soft 404 errors.[3]
• Keep your sitemaps up to date, with all the content you want Google to crawl.[3]
• Avoid long redirect chains.[3]
• Make pages efficient to load.[3]

The same guide explains the word “overload” in the status. Google sets a crawl capacity limit for each site so that crawling does not overwhelm its servers. The limit goes up when the site answers steadily, and goes down when the site slows or answers with server errors.[3]

For a site without a large number of fast-changing pages, Google says keeping the sitemap up to date and checking the Page indexing report regularly is adequate.[3]

Where Convertlyft helps

The free SEO audit crawls up to 25 pages: it reads robots.txt and the sitemap and audits each page it opens, so you see what could stop a page being fetched or indexed. Whether a page is in Google’s index only Google can say, and a crawl is not proof. Connect Search Console to Convertlyft and Google’s clicks and times shown sit beside your visits; the connection is read-only, unless you choose to submit your sitemap to Google from the SEO room. Related: how to check if Google has indexed your site, and the status Duplicate without user-selected canonical.