Google recommends that the “discovered – currently not indexed” status in Search Console’s Index Coverage report can last forever, as there is no guarantee that every page on the web will be indexed.
This was explained in a Google Search Central SEO office hour hangout recorded on February 18th.
A guy named Davor Bobek joined the livestream to ask Google’s search advocate, John Mueller, about the “discovered – currently not indexed” message and how long it’s expected to last.
This message means that the page has been found by Google but has not yet been crawled.
There are a number of reasons why Google doesn’t crawl a page despite knowing it exists.
This may be due to technical reasons. Google may have tried to crawl the URL, but the site is overloaded. If this is the case, then Google will reschedule the crawl.
Another reason for a “discovered – not currently indexed” message in Google’s opinion may be that the site has not reached a certain quality threshold.
Google does not guarantee that every webpage will be crawled and indexed.
Although Google is one of the largest companies in the world, its resources in terms of computing power are limited.
The computing resources Google uses to crawl the web are reserved for sites deemed valuable and of high quality.
For this reason, the “discovered – currently not indexed” status may persist forever.
Mueller said a lot in his reply, which you can read in the next section.
Google Index Coverage Report: “Discovered – Not currently indexed”
When asked how long a page could be discovered but not indexed, Mueller said:
“That could be forever. This is where we just don’t crawl and index all our pages. This is perfectly normal for any site where we don’t have everything indexed.
And, especially with a newer site, if you have a lot of content, I would assume a lot of new content will be discovered and not indexed for a while.
And then over time it usually changes, like it’s actually being crawled, or it’s actually being indexed, when we see that there’s actually value in paying more attention to the site itself. But not guaranteed. “
So what should you do if you have a lot of pages that are discovered by Google but not indexed?
Rather than leaving content as it is and hoping it will someday be indexed, keep working on your site to improve its overall quality.
Mueller continued:
“So from that standpoint, I’m not saying you should wait a while and then suddenly the crawling and indexing will be better. It’s more important, like keep working on the site and make sure our systems recognize the crawl Fetch and index more value, and then over time we’ll crawl and index more.”
Hear Mueller’s full response in the video below.
For a more in-depth look at how quality issues prevent content from being indexed, see the following articles:
Featured Image: IB Photography/Shutterstock
