Why your page is not on Google, and how to fix it

Start with what Google says

Before you change anything, find out what Google thinks.

1. Search for site:example.com/the-page with the exact url. If it appears, the page is indexed and the problem is ranking, not indexing.
2. Open Google Search Console and use URL inspection on the page. It tells you whether the url is on Google, when it was last crawled, which canonical Google chose and why it was excluded if it was.
3. Look at the Pages report for the reason that covers the most urls. A pattern across many pages points at a template or a site wide setting.

Then confirm the technical state from the outside with the indexability checker. It checks the four gates below in one go and shows the evidence.

Gate 1: the status code

Only pages that end in HTTP 200 are indexed.

• 404 or 410. The page does not exist at that address. Fix the link or restore the page.
• 5xx. The server failed. Repeated errors make Google crawl less and drop pages.
• A redirect. The url redirects elsewhere, so Google indexes the destination instead. That is correct for moved pages.
• A soft 404. The page answers 200 but looks empty or like an error. Give it real content or let it answer 404.

Gate 2: robots.txt

If robots.txt disallows the path, Googlebot does not fetch the page. It may still list the url without a description, but it cannot read the content.

Run the robots.txt checker on the page. It quotes the exact rule that blocks it. Remove or narrow the rule, and remember that the most specific user agent group wins: a User-agent: Googlebot group replaces the * group for Google entirely.

Gate 3: noindex

A noindex directive removes the page from results. It can come from two places:

• <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> in the HTML.
• X-Robots-Tag: noindex in the HTTP response headers, often added by a server rule, a CDN or a plugin for a whole folder.

Development and staging setups add noindex on purpose. The classic launch bug is shipping it to production.

Gate 4: the canonical

A canonical link that points at another url asks Google to index that url instead. Common mistakes:

• Every page of a template points at the home page.
• Pages point at the http version, or at the old domain after a migration.
• Paginated pages point at page one.

The canonical checker shows the value and tests that the target works.

When all four gates pass

If nothing technical blocks the page, it is a question of discovery, rendering or value.

Discovery

Google has to find the page. Link to it from relevant pages on your site, list it in the sitemap, and request indexing in Search Console. Orphan pages, which nothing links to, are found slowly or never.

Rendering

If the content only appears after JavaScript runs, Google has to render the page to see it. That happens later than the crawl and can fail. The JavaScript SEO checker tells you how much of the page is in the server HTML.

Duplication

If the page is very similar to another page, on your site or elsewhere, Google indexes one and leaves out the rest. Make the page clearly different, or consolidate the duplicates and point their canonicals at one version.

Value

“Crawled, currently not indexed” usually means Google did not find the page useful enough yet. Thin pages, auto generated pages and near empty category pages are the usual cases. Add what a visitor actually needs, or remove the page and consolidate.

After the fix

1. Re-run the check to confirm the fix is live. Caches and CDNs sometimes serve the old version.
2. Request indexing for the most important urls in Search Console.
3. Give it days to weeks. Watch the url inspection result rather than search results, which lag.
4. Set up a monitor so the next regression is caught the day it ships.