How do you fix an indexing issue?

Short answer

Start with the exact status in Search Console, because each one has a different fix. Technical blocks, like noindex, robots rules and wrong canonicals, are quick to fix. Quality judgements, like “crawled, currently not indexed”, are not fixed by requesting indexing. They are fixed by making the page worth keeping, merging it, or letting it go.

“My pages are not getting indexed” is one of the most common things I hear, and it covers at least six different problems. The fix depends entirely on which one you have, so the first job is to stop treating them as one thing.

Step 1: read the exact status

Open Search Console, go to the page indexing report, and look at the reasons listed under “Why pages aren’t indexed”. Each reason is a different diagnosis. Then use the URL inspection tool on two or three affected pages to see when they were last crawled and which URL Google chose as canonical.

Step 2: fix the technical blocks first

These are the fast ones, and they are surprisingly common after a site rebuild or a plugin change.

Excluded by noindex. Check whether it is deliberate. Staging settings carried into production, SEO plugin defaults on certain post types, and theme options cause most accidental noindex tags.
Blocked by robots.txt. Check the rule. Remember that robots.txt stops crawling, not indexing, so blocking a page you want removed is the wrong tool.
Alternate page with proper canonical, or duplicate without user-selected canonical. Google has decided another URL represents this content. Check the canonical tag, internal links and sitemap all point at the same version.
Page with redirect, 404, or server error. Make sure important URLs return a clean 200 and are linked directly, not through redirect chains.
Soft 404. The page returns success but looks empty or like an error. Google’s documentation defines it as a success code with content suggesting the page does not exist. Thin category pages with no products and expired listings are the usual cause. I wrote that Google is usually right about soft 404s.

Step 3: understand the quality statuses

Two statuses cause most of the frustration.

Discovered, currently not indexed means Google knows the URL but has not fetched it. On a small site, this usually means the page is poorly linked or Google does not yet see it as a priority. On a large one, it can mean Google is not willing to crawl everything. Better internal links from strong pages help more than resubmitting.

Crawled, currently not indexed means Google fetched the page and chose not to keep it. This is usually a judgement that the page adds little: thin, near duplicate, or similar to something already indexed. I wrote a full explanation in what crawled, currently not indexed actually means.

Step 4: stop requesting indexing for rejected pages

The request indexing button is useful for a new or updated page you want Google to see quickly. It does not override a quality decision. Requesting indexing for the same thin pages every week changes nothing, and I see teams spend hours on it.

For pages Google has crawled and rejected, there are three honest options. Make the page substantially better and more distinct. Merge it into a stronger page on the same topic and redirect. Or accept that it does not need to be in the index: tag pages, thin archives and filter combinations usually do not.

Step 5: check the pattern, not just the page

If dozens or hundreds of pages share a status, look for what they have in common. Same template? Same section? Published in the same week? Indexing problems almost always come in groups, and the group points at the cause. A whole blog category excluded usually means a setting, not a content problem. A thousand location pages crawled but not indexed usually means they are too similar to each other.

Google is also clear that duplication is not punished. Its guidance on duplicate URLs describes consolidation as a way to consolidate signals and avoid spending crawling time on duplicate pages. Duplicate pages are simply left out in favour of the version Google prefers.

Step 6: then wait, and measure

After fixing technical blocks, pages usually reappear within days to a few weeks as Google recrawls them. Quality improvements take longer. Track the count in each status over time, not the total indexed pages, because the total moves for many reasons.

When pages suddenly drop out

If pages that were indexed suddenly are not, look at what shipped that week. A deploy, a plugin update, a robots change, a migration. Almost every sudden deindexing I have investigated traced back to a change someone made. I covered how to trace it in deindexed pages: find out what shipped that week.

One last check worth making: not every unindexed page is a problem. Search Console reports every URL Google has seen, including feeds, parameter variations, old redirects and pages you never meant to publish. Before fixing anything, decide which URLs you actually want in Google. Often the honest answer cuts the list by more than half.

If you have a pile of indexing statuses and no clear idea which ones matter, my technical SEO service sorts the technical blocks from the quality judgements and tells you which pages are worth fighting for.