What does the error "Crawled - not indexed" mean?

Before Google can index it, a page must be "crawled" first. Crawling refers to the process of finding new or updated pages.

When you see the notification "Crawled - currently not indexed", this means Google has crawled the page but has chosen not to index it. The URL will therefore not be shown in search results for the time being.

⚠ Note: This doesn't necessarily mean there are errors on the page, and it's still possible (but not a given) that the page will be indexed in future. In any case, the URL doesn't need to be re-submitted for crawling.

How can you resolve these issues?

Is the page in question important, and would you like it to be shown in search results? If so, you can try to request reindexing. Before doing this, review the page carefully and confirm there are no other errors or warnings. You can use Google's URL Inspection Tool to do this, and easily solve any other issues before requesting indexing again.

Note that this doesn't guarantee the issue will be resolved. We recommend ruling out any underlying issues by looking for the root cause and resolving it.

If you see the notification "Discovered - currently not indexed", this means there's an issue in the "index" section.

This notification appears when Google is aware of the existence of the page(s) in question but has not yet crawled them. It also means the pages have not yet been indexed. If you have a small website, without many pages, this issue may resolve itself.

Google must be aware of the existence of your website. It can discover your site via internal links on the website itself, links from other websites to your website, or sitemaps.

⚠ Note: Google can do a lot, but it doesn't have the resources to immediately crawl every page it finds. This means indexing issues occur fairly easily, and often.

Causes

There are several reasons Google may not be indexing your page, such as the quality of the content on the page, poor link structure, or issues with the server.

• Content quality: Pages must meet so-called "Google Quality Thresholds", which means they may be classified as "not worth crawling". These pages are not indexed, and content considered more valuable is prioritized. To avoid this, make sure your website content isn't outdated or duplicated.
• Poor link structure: If there aren't enough links on a page, it may not be crawled. This translates to the page being perceived by Google as not important enough to index. Make sure you direct as many links as possible to your URL.
• Server issues: While inconvenient, server issues can impact crawling. One possible reason is the overloading of the website.
• Non-optimized sitemap: This is the map Google uses to navigate your website, and if it's not properly optimized there's a risk of important content not being seen. 
• Redirects: Avoid redirects, as these can force google to send multiple unnecessary requests to the servicer. If redirects don't work properly, this can result in a "Redirect error".

Do these issues impact SEO?

Yes. If your pages/URLs aren't indexed by Google, they won't be listed in search engine results, so it's important to review Google Search Console for "Discovered - currently not indexed" errors. You can see at a glance whether the affected pages are ones that should be listed in search results.

In some cases, URLs with the status “Found - not currently indexed” do not need to be updated. For example, you don't need to do anything if:

• The number of affected URLs is low, and they are crawled and indexed over time.
• The report contains URLs that should not be crawled or indexed, e.g. those that have a “Noindex” tag, or that are blocked by robots.txt.

Is the number of URLs increasing, and are these essential URLs? If yes, the URLs in question should be checked and optimized, as this may impact your website's visibility in Google.