What is the Page indexing report?
The Page indexing report, formerly called Coverage, is the Google Search Console report that shows which of a site's URLs Google has indexed and why the others are not. It splits known URLs into Indexed and Not indexed, and lists a reason and a count for each excluded group.
It is where site-wide indexing problems show up first. It is also widely misread, because a large "Not indexed" number is often perfectly healthy.
Layout
You find it under Indexing → Pages. The top chart tracks indexed and not-indexed counts over time. Below it, the table Why pages aren't indexed lists each reason with:
- Source: Website means the cause is something on your side that you can change. Google systems means Google decided, as with "Crawled - currently not indexed".
- Validation: the state of any fix you asked Google to verify.
- Pages: the number of affected URLs. Clicking a row shows up to 1,000 examples.
A dropdown at the top filters between all known pages, all submitted pages, meaning URLs in your sitemaps, and unsubmitted pages only.
Reasons that are usually fine
Not every URL should be indexed, and the report counts everything Google has seen.
| Reason | Usually means |
|---|---|
| Page with redirect | An old URL correctly forwarding to a new one |
| Alternate page with proper canonical tag | A duplicate pointing at its main version, as intended |
| Excluded by 'noindex' tag | A page you chose to keep out |
| Not found (404) | A deleted page, or a mistyped link someone made |
These become problems only when the URLs listed are ones you wanted in the index.
Reasons that deserve a look
- Server error (5xx) and Redirect error: Google could not fetch the page.
- Blocked by robots.txt or Blocked due to access forbidden (403) on pages meant to rank.
- Soft 404: a page returning
200that looks empty or missing to Google. - Duplicate without user-selected canonical and Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user: Google folded the page into another URL.
- Crawled - currently not indexed and Discovered - currently not indexed: Google knows the URL and has not indexed it, usually a quality or priority signal.
We have step-by-step guides for several of these, including crawled - currently not indexed, discovered - currently not indexed and page with redirect.
The most useful view
Switch the filter to All submitted pages. Now the report only covers URLs in your sitemap, which are by definition pages you want indexed. Anything not indexed in this view is a real gap. The unfiltered view mixes in feeds, parameters, old URLs and everything else Google ever came across.
That is also why a clean sitemap matters: list only canonical, indexable 200 pages, and the filtered report becomes a to-do list.
Validating a fix
After fixing the cause, open the reason and click Validate fix. Google rechecks a sample right away and then recrawls the rest over the following days or weeks. Validation fails if any checked URL still has the issue, so fix all of them, or remove strays from the sitemap, before starting. You do not have to validate. Google updates the report through normal crawling either way, only more slowly.
On WordPress, typical sources of clutter in this report are attachment pages, tag archives, feeds and ?replytocom= links. See index bloat for which of them to remove.
Common questions
Is it bad to have many "Not indexed" pages?
Not necessarily. Redirects, canonicalised duplicates and deliberately noindexed pages all count as not indexed. Judge the number by which URLs are in it, ideally using the "All submitted pages" filter.
How often is the Page indexing report updated?
It refreshes every few days, and the chart shows the date of the last update. It is not real time, so recent fixes take a while to appear.
What is the difference between the Page indexing report and URL Inspection?
The report summarises the whole site by reason. URL Inspection gives the full detail for one URL, including the canonical Google selected and the last crawl date.