A web page must reside in Google’s index before it can appear in organic search results. A page can be ranked without being crawled by Google, but never without being indexed.
Therefore, controlling the indexing of a website is critical.
Google Search Console helpfully provides a site’s index status under Indexing > Pages. The section contains a list of “Why pages are not indexed” with a summary of “Crawled, currently not indexed”.
It can be confusing. Why does Google crawl a page but not index it? Is the page inferior in any way?
No. Cannot be indexed not necessarily a sign of poor quality
Indexing > Search Console Pages provides non-indexed reasons. Click on the image to enlarge it.
Indexing 101
Google doesn’t always immediately apply algorithmic scores to the pages it crawls, especially with newer sites. Sometimes it collects data first and then indexes.
So it’s not so much a quality issue as a time issue.
A low-ranking page is a better indicator of poor quality, since Google presumably has data for its algorithm.
Certainly, Google can remove a page from its index. This is the other reason to monitor Search Console’s “Crawled – not currently indexed” list. A site with no new pages but a growing number in the “Crawled – currently not indexed” list has a problem.
For example, widespread deindexing occurred shortly after a core update in 2020. Google’s Gary Illyes confirmed that the pages were removed due to “low quality content and spam”.
In my experience, non-indexing is common on sites with half a million or more URLs for two reasons.
Too big. The site has too many pages for Google to index. Google doesn’t have one maximum indexing, but has tracking limitations. So a monstrous site could have higher quality and uneven indexing. Low visibility The site has many pages that are several clicks away from the home page or have few internal backlinks. I’ve seen sites where half the pages only have one or two internal backlinks. This tells Google that these pages are not important.
However, deindexing needs immediate attention if it worsens or includes 25% or more pages. The first usually results from basic or useful content algorithm updates. The latter is probably due to poor site structure that buries the pages, causing Google to devalue them.
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