According to some reports, more than half of web traffic comes from organic search. Imagine how terrible it would be for your site’s visibility and rankings if its pages disappeared from Google’s search results.
A site’s failure to show up in search results is often caused by Google indexing issues, such as redirection errors, server errors, or duplicate content. It's crucial to address these problems promptly to prevent further harm to your website and business.
Fortunately, many of these issues can be resolved easily, helping your site recover rapidly.
Read on and learn how to detect and fix Google indexing issues.
What is Google indexing?
Simply put, indexing is the process by which Google adds your website to its database. When Google indexes your site, it will appear and rank in search results, and more people will discover your content, products, or services.
In short, your site’s indexing status is crucial to its visibility, ranking, traffic, and profitability.
However, Google may fail to index your site. When this happens, your site will not appear and rank in SERPs. It’s also possible that Google has indexed your site but deindexed it afterward due to some issues. There are many potential reasons why Google doesn’t index a site and it’s important to tackle these problems appropriately.
Impact of Google indexing issues
Here’s how page indexing issues can adversely affect your website’s SEO performance (and business 😱):
Decreased organic traffic
Organic traffic comes from people googling a topic and landing on your site. For businesses, losing organic traffic reduces their chance of attracting potential customers and revenue prospects. So, if Google doesn’t index your site, people cannot discover it, ultimately decreasing its organic traffic and potential to generate revenue.
Lower search engine rankings
Some issues that can affect a site’s indexing status can also harm its search engine ranking. For instance, a site with a convulsive and disorganized structure, thin content, or low mobile optimization has lower chances of getting indexed as well as topping Google’s SERPs.
Missed opportunities for exposure
Your website might not appear in Google search results because of an indexing issue. This means losing vital free advertising for your brand and content exposure, hindering your site and business from flourishing.
How to easily detect Google indexing issues
To check if your URLs are experiencing some Google indexing issues, simply follow the steps below:
Step 1: Log in to Google Search Console (GSC).
Step 2: In the left menu, select a property and click on “Pages” under “Indexing” This will take you to the GSC’s Index Coverage Report (AKA page indexing report) for all pages on your website. The report page presents a few of the following indexing errors for all pages in your property:
- Blocked by Robots.txt: When you see a “blocked by robots.txt '' error in the report, it means that your robots.txt file is preventing Googlebot from crawling your site. You might have configured the file incorrectly or forgot to move it to your root directory. If this happens, and in the absence of external links, it is unlikely that a domain will be indexed in Google.
- Excluded by ‘noindex’ tag: Google detects a “noindex” in the robots meta tag, telling the search engine not to index certain pages of your website.
- Soft 404 Errors: This happens when your website returns a “200 OK” status code or a “Page not found” message for a requested non-existent page instead of a proper 404 error code. In other words, your webpage informs visitors that it’s already non-existent, but it tells Google that it still exists.
- Server Errors: These errors can happen when your server prevents Googlebot from accessing and crawling your URLs. It’s possible that the server is down, misconfigured, or overloaded. Talk with your hosting / server provider if server errors persist.
- Moved Permanently (301) Redirects: 301 redirects “move” users requesting a URL to a another one. Incorrect (and excessive) setup of 301 redirects might hinder Google from following the redirect chain or locating the latest (and permanent) destination, preventing the indexing of the target URL.
- Not Found (404) Errors: A 404 error happens when a user accesses a URL that no longer exists or is broken. This means that the server cannot locate the requested page. Google might assume that some pages no longer exist if they frequently return 404 errors, preventing its indexation.
- Duplicate Content: Pages with near-identical content make it difficult for Google to index the “canonical” page. It might index the wrong page or refuse to index both of the duplicates.
- Insufficient Content or Low Quality: Poorly written, thin, and outdated content can cause indexing errors. It’s also possible that Google can’t index a site because it brings poor user experience and low-quality interface.
- User Generated Content (UGC): User Generated Content can be harmful to your URLs’ indexing status if they are poorly managed. For instance, spam submissions with irrelevant or inappropriate content can negatively affect your site’s indexing.
- New or Recently Updated Pages: It might take some time before Google indexes new or updated content on your site.
The Index Coverage Report (Page Indexing Report) in Google Search Console provides a detailed list of issues why some of your pages are not indexed. You can use the report to identify the exact issues as well as the affected pages.
Before fixing, you have to know what to fix!
Common causes of Google page indexing issues
Familiarize yourself with these common indexing issues and their respective solutions:
1. Thin or low-quality content
Google strives to provide high-quality, informative, and valuable content to users. So, if Google detects that your content lacks any of these qualities, they’ll consider it as thin content, offering no substance or value to the users.
Here are some examples of thin content:
- Articles / blogposts with less than 300 words.
- Scraped or stolen content from other publishers.
- Content with outdated or incorrect information.
- Articles with blatant keyword-stuffing.
Fix: Create reader-centric content that provides useful information. Delete or unify pages considered as “thin content”.
2. Duplicate content
When a site has pages with similar content, they’re called duplicates. Google might struggle to index the “canonical” page between duplicates and might choose the wrong page as canonical. In this case, Google might not index the actual content you want to get indexed.
It’s also possible that Google sees your content as a duplicate of another page from a different website. In this case, Google might not index your page when it treats the other website’s content as the “canonical” one.
Fix: Strive for original content among your pages; you can also mark the canonical page among duplicates.
3. Redirect errors
Google cannot index pages experiencing any of these redirect errors:
- Endless redirect loops.
- Empty URL redirect.
- Too long redirect chain.
Fix: Use a web crawler (for example Screaming Frog) to detect redirect chains and fix the types of redirect errors mentioned above. You might need to request again that Google recrawl and index the fixed pages.
4. Blocked by robots.txt
The Robots.txt is a text file that instructs Google bot which pages of a given website should and shouldn’t be crawled. All pages in the Robots.txt file that are disallowed won’t be considered by Google when it crawls your site. The important point here is that for a URL to be indexed, it must first be crawled.
IMAGEN
Fix: Check the Robots.txt file and ensure that no important URLs are discouraged from being crawled.
5. Server errors
Also known as 5xx errors, these are site accessibility errors due to some problems in the servers. For instance, 503 error is a service unavailable error which can happen if the server is under maintenance or experiencing high traffic.
Solution: Diagnose the current server configuration and fix any technical problems. You might need to request Google to recrawl your pages upon fixing them.
Do you want to know more about 5xx errors? Check this epic content from Ahrefs.
6. Poor mobile optimization
Google loves mobile-friendly pages. If the algorithm detects that your content is inaccessible and provides a poor mobile user experience, Google might not index your page(s).
Solution: Optimize your website’s UI, layout, and navigation for mobile use. Its content must be readable and accessible for mobile devices. Responsive design is your friend.
7. Newly-made website
This is not really an “issue” per se. But oftentimes, content from freshly made sites might take a couple of days or weeks to get indexed.
Solution: Just wait; Google will automatically crawl your site. You can also ask for the services of a third-party indexing software for support.
8. Exceeded crawl budget
Your site has a maximum number of pages (“Crawl Budget”) that Google can crawl for a specific period. Once you exceed this budget, some pages might not get indexed, even if they have no existing issue.
Solution: Run a site audit and see if you can eliminate unnecessary pages and / or internal linking to optimize website architecture.
Get rid of google indexing issues fast
With our fast indexing tool you can monitor your pages’ indexing status 24/7 and check for indexing issues that keep them from appearing in SERPs. With our AI-powered tools and official Google APIs, we can also guarantee the indexing of your URLs in 48 hours or less.
Are you experiencing any Google website URL indexing issues?