Indexing is Google keeping a copy of a page so it can appear in search. The Page indexing report sorts every URL Google knows on your site into indexed and not indexed, and gives a reason for each one left out. Plenty of those reasons are healthy: redirects, copies, pages you hid on purpose. Act only where a page you want customers to find is on the list.
What does the Page indexing report show?
You find it in Search Console under Indexing, then Pages. It covers every address Google has come across on your domain, not just the ones in your sitemap. An office page you renamed in 2021, a contact form with ?service=payroll on the end, a mistyped link on a directory site: all of them get counted. That is why the not-indexed total can be bigger than the number of pages you actually have.
Look at the Source column before anything else. Google’s help page says that, “in general, you can fix only issues where the source is listed as ‘Website’.” The example list under each reason stops at 1,000 URLs, and it is not the place to check one page: URL Inspection does that.
Google also says a site under 500 pages “probably doesn’t need to use this report.” Most sites for accountants, law firms and recruitment agencies are that size. We would still open it after launch, after a redesign, and after moving host or CMS, because a single template or plugin setting can push every page into the same row.
Which statuses need fixing?
Google lists 17 reasons in all. Six are normally Google behaving as it should, four need you to read the example URLs, and seven need fixing whenever the page is meant to be public. A zero is not the goal. Google says plainly that you “should not expect all URLs on your site to be indexed, only the canonical pages.”
| Reason Google gives | What to do |
|---|---|
| Usually fine, if these are URLs you expected | |
| Page with redirect | Nothing. The old address forwards, and Google indexes the destination. |
| Alternate page with proper canonical tag | Nothing, as long as the tag names the right page. |
| Duplicate without user-selected canonical | Nothing if Google kept the version you would have chosen. Otherwise add a canonical tag. |
| URL marked ‘noindex’ | Nothing, for pages you meant to hide, like a customer login or a thank-you page. |
| Not found (404) | Nothing, for pages you removed on purpose. |
| URL blocked by robots.txt | Nothing, for admin, portal and booking-system paths. |
| Read the example URLs first | |
| Crawled - currently not indexed | Google fetched the page and chose not to keep it. Matters when it is a page you rely on. |
| Discovered - currently not indexed | Google has the address but has not fetched it yet. |
| Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user | Google kept a different URL from the one your tag names. URL Inspection shows which. |
| Soft 404 | The page answers 200 OK but looks empty or missing to Google. |
| Fix, if the page should be public | |
| Server error (5xx), Redirect error | The server failed, or a redirect looped or chained too far. |
| Blocked due to unauthorized request (401), access forbidden (403) or other 4xx issue | A password, firewall or bot filter answered Google instead of the page. |
| Indexed, though blocked by robots.txt | Lift the block. If you want it out of search, use noindex instead. |
| Page indexed without content | Google has the URL but could not read anything on it. Run the live test in URL Inspection. |
The final two appear under Warning and the others under Not indexed, as set out on Google’s Page indexing report help page.
Which settings fill the report with rows?
On a typical service business site, three settings cause most of the noise. None of them is rare, and each one repeats across every page.
No canonical tag. Your quote page gets linked with ?utm_source=linkedin, your services list gets a ?sort= option, and your WordPress theme prints every post under /tag/ and /category/ as well. Without a canonical tag naming the clean address, Google has to guess which copy to keep, and the rest go under Duplicate without user-selected canonical.
The site answers on two hosts. If www.example.co.uk and example.co.uk both load, or plain http still works alongside https, Google sees two copies of every page and keeps one. A temporary redirect (302 or 307) between them is weaker than it looks: Google’s redirect guide treats only permanent redirects as a strong sign that “the redirect target should be canonical.”
Missing pages that answer 200 OK. A jobs page that shows “no vacancies found” for any made-up search, or a theme that sends every dead link to the homepage, turns broken URLs into soft 404s. Every bad link anyone points at the site adds another row.
How to fix page indexing issues
Change the setting and the rows clear on their own over time. Each fix is done once.
Pick one host and redirect the rest
Decide which address you use, for example www.example.co.uk, and send the bare domain and plain http straight to it with a permanent 301 or 308. One hop only: no chain through a third address on the way.
Give every page a canonical tag
Each page states its own clean address in a tag in the head: <link rel="canonical" href="https://www.example.co.uk/services/payroll">. Google describes it as “a strong signal that the specified URL should become canonical.” Once it is there, every tracking, sort or filter version of the page points back to the original. On WordPress, most SEO plugins add it for you; check it is switched on.
Make missing pages return a 404
If a made-up address on your site loads a page with 200 OK, find the theme, plugin or search-page setting responsible and change it. Our soft 404 guide covers the usual culprits on service business sites.
Tell Google where your sitemap is
Put a Sitemap: line in robots.txt and submit the same file in the Sitemaps report in Search Console. Google is clear that a sitemap “is merely a hint”: it helps Google find pages, it does not get them indexed. Our robots.txt checker shows whether yours names a sitemap.
Hide pages with noindex, not robots.txt
If robots.txt blocks a page, Google never fetches it, so “the crawler will never see the noindex rule.” The address can still turn up in results if other sites link to it. To keep a page out, let Google crawl it and give it noindex.
When the setting is fixed, open that reason in the report and press Validate fix. Google rechecks the affected URLs, and the help page says validation “typically takes up to about two weeks.” Leave it running; there is no need to press it again.
How do I get one page indexed?
Say you have just published a page for managed IT support in Bristol. Run the live test in URL Inspection, press Request indexing, and link to the new page from somewhere Google already visits, such as your services menu or homepage. Google says a new page can take “a week or so” to be crawled and indexed, and that indexing “is never instant, even when you submit a crawl request directly.” There is no way to force it. If the page ends up in crawled - currently not indexed or discovered - currently not indexed, those guides pick up from there.
Getting indexed is the first of three stages we work through with every client: indexed, found, then named in AI answers. These settings are where we begin on every client’s site, on one plan at £1,750 a month. See what the plan includes.