Crawled – Currently Not Indexed: Common Causes and How to Fix Them

Crawled currently not indexed can be one of the most difficult technical SEO items to fix. Depending on how many pages you have on your website, you are bound to run into this issue at some point.

But what does crawled – currently not indexed mean? And how do I fix it? In this article, I’ll go through some of the reasons why your page might be marked as crawled – currently not indexed and how to fix it.

What Does Crawled Current Not Indexed Mean?

So what does crawled currently not index mean? Crawled – currently not indexed means that Google was able to discover your page and initiated the crawl of your page but determined to not include it within their index.

On the flipside, if your page was discovered – currently not indexed that means Google knows about this URL and knows it exists but they haven’t initiated their crawl of it yet.

 With crawled – currently not indexed, they initiated the crawl but determined not to index it. 

How Do I Fix Crawled – Currently Not Indexed?

A few reasons why your page is marked as crawled currently not indexed could be due to the following: 

• Thin or low-value content
• Duplicated content
• Lack of internal linking
• False positives
• Wrong Search Intent

To fix crawled currently not indexed, you most likely have to improve the page and submit it to a priority crawl. As mentioned above, to improve your page and give it a better chance of being indexed, you can do the following: 

• Point more internal links towards it
• Remove duplicated content
• Add value to thin or low-value pages
• Match the intent of the search

There’s a few reasons why your page might not be indexed so that’s why it’s important to go through each issue and determine the cause.

Common Causes of Crawled, Currently Not Indexed, and How to Fix Them

Thin and low-value content

The most common cause for crawled not indexed URLs is due to thin or low-value content. As more and more content gets produced, Google is spending less resources crawling and indexing pages.

So to reduce the number of indexed pages,  Google is excluding pages they consider low value. This could mean it either contains outdated or thin content, or it’s not valuable to a search query. 

The way to check for this issue is to check the number of queries attached to that individual page. If the count is low, then Google likely thinks it’s not relevant for any particular query.

Solution

The way to fix low-value or thin content is to start with keyword research and scan the SERPs to see how the pages are ranking for the query. If all of the results contain fleshed out information that your article doesn’t cover, then you’ll likely need to add more information to your content. 

Determine which information you’re missing and then flesh out the article to make it more comprehensive and answer the query better.

Duplicated content

Another issue that you may run into is having multiple instances of duplicated or reused content. There’s a chance you have content that’s too similar or is reusing information from other pages. If you have content that’s marked as a duplicate, then it’s most likely going to end up in crawled currently not indexed.

Solution

The way to fix this is to determine which pages are being considered duplicated and deleting whichever one is preventing that page from being indexed the way you can check for this is to either go and Google search console and look up the query that that article is targeting and see if any other pages on the website rank for it or you could use site operators that allow you to search across the whole website and find information that might be considered similar

Search Intent

Another reason your page might be crawled currently not indexed is that it doesn’t match the intent behind any query. This means your content isn’t aligned with Google’s perceived understanding of the intent behind that query. 

In this case, Google determined the page isn’t relevant for the search query and it doesn’t match the intent of the user search. 

As an example, if you were to try and rank for “SEO tools” the majority of the results are going to be for actual SEO tools.

Now if you do a search for the “best SEO tools”, the ranking articles on the SERPs will now be informational or comparison articles that talk about the best SEO tools on the market. 

They’ll be either one (or a mix) of the following 5 

• Transactional
• Commercial
• Navigational
• Informational
• Comparison

Solution

So the best way to avoid misrepresenting search intent is to review the SERPs before each search and review which articles are primarily ranking. 

Lack of Internal links

Another reason your pages might be marked as crawled – currently not indexed is because of a lack of internal linking, leaving these pages as orphans.

 If your URL is orphaned, then that means Google knows your page exists, via your sitemap, but determined this page to be low-value. 

Solution

To fix these orphaned pages, all you need to do is add more internal links. When relevant of course. Internal linking should be integrated into your SEO strategy, but using tools like Ahrefs or Screaming Frog is a great way to see if there are any orphaned pages on your website. The more internal links you have pointed toward a page, the more valuable it’s seen by search engines.

False positives

One cause of crawled – currently not indexed are false positives. False positives are pages marked as either discovered or crawled currently not indexed but are indexed.

To see if your URL is a false positive, all you need to do is a live URL test in Google Search Console This will tell you if your page actually is indexed.

False positives aren’t much of a concern as this doesn’t present any issues to your website. False positives are moreso an issue with Google’s reporting, so this generally isn’t really something to be concerned about.

When is ‘Crawled – currently not indexed’ a problem?

Crawled currently not indexed becomes a problem when URLs created for organic are consistently being excluded from the index. If your page was created to be found through organic search and it’s excluded from the index, then you’ll need to audit those pages for the issues listed above.

There’s a good chance that the majority of the URLs on the site are just going to be junk pages. If you have a large quantity of URLs excluded from the index, then crawled – currently not indexed becomes an issue. This means we’ll have to manually audit each URL and figure out the cause.

No URL is ever going to be the same so it’s important to audit each URL closely to determine the root cause. 

Can I force Google to Crawl and Index My Pages?

Unfortunately, you cannot force Google to index pages. What you can do is create pages of value that matches search intent and will provide value to a searcher. Providing relevant, helpful, and unique information to searches is Google’s main priority.

The best way to guide Google’s hand with indexing your pages is by only creating valuable and unique content.

Closing Thoughts on Crawled Current Not Indexed

As I mentioned above, no approach is the same when it comes to crawled currently not indexed, however,  this issue does require an investigative approach to determine the root cause for each URL. 

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