Discovered - currently not indexed is a status in the Page indexing report of Google Search Console. Google knows the URL but has not crawled it yet. In the report, the last crawl date is empty for these URLs.
What does the status mean?
According to Google’s Help page, Google typically wanted to crawl the URL but expected this to overload the site, so it rescheduled the crawl. According to reports, the status often disappears on its own on small sites.
In its crawl budget guide, Google lists sites with a large share of URLs in this status as one of the types of sites the guide is written for. If the status stays for weeks, a look at the pages helps. Practitioners name weak internal linking, many similar pages and a slow server as possible triggers (assessment).
With Crawled - currently not indexed, Google has already fetched the page.
| Status in Search Console | What happened | Cause per Help Center | What the Help Center recommends |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crawled - currently not indexed | Google crawled the page but did not index it. It may or may not be indexed in the future. | not stated in the Help Center | No need to resubmit the URL for crawling |
| Discovered - currently not indexed (this term) | Google found the page but has not crawled it yet. The last crawl date is empty. | typically: crawling was expected to overload the site, so Google rescheduled it | no action stated |
| Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user | The URL is marked as canonical, but Google indexed a different page as canonical | Google thinks another URL makes a better canonical | Inspect the URL and compare the Google-selected canonical with the user-declared canonical |
| Duplicate without user-selected canonical | The page is a duplicate. Google serves the other page it chose as canonical. | The page does not indicate a preferred canonical | Not an error per Google; if the choice is wrong, mark the canonical explicitly or make the content differ substantially |
| URL blocked by robots.txt | The site's robots.txt file blocked the page | a rule in robots.txt | To make sure the page is not indexed, remove the robots.txt block and use 'noindex' |
| Indexed, though blocked by robots.txt | The page is indexed although robots.txt blocks it. Google does not crawl it. | Other pages link to it; Google indexes it using information from the linking page | To exclude it, remove the block and use 'noindex'. To allow it, update robots.txt. |
| URL marked ‘noindex’ | Google found a 'noindex' directive when trying to index the page and did not index it | 'noindex' in the page source or response headers | If intended, nothing to do. Otherwise remove 'noindex' and check with the live test. |
| Soft 404 | The page shows a 'not found' message but returns no 404 status code | Google thinks the response is a soft 404 | Return 404 for real 'not found' pages; otherwise add more information and view the rendered page in URL Inspection |
Labels and explanations follow the German and English Search Console Help pages on the Page indexing report. The two language versions punctuate the labels differently (German uses an en dash, English a hyphen). The URL Inspection tool shows the status of a single URL. Sources: Search-Console-Hilfe: Bericht zur Seitenindexierung; Search Console Help: Page indexing report. Last checked: .
Example
A shop publishes several thousand product pages in one day. Google learns about them from the sitemap but fetches only some at first. The rest appears as “Discovered – currently not indexed”.
FAQ
How long until a page gets indexed? Google gives no fixed time. After a fix, validation in the report typically takes up to about two weeks.
Sources
- Page indexing report – Search Console Helpsupport.google.com
- Optimize your crawl budget – Google Crawling Infrastructuredevelopers.google.com
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