How To Fix Discovered – Currently Not Indexed Issue?

If you’ve ever had a “discovered – currently not indexed” issue in Google Webmaster Tools, you know how frustrating it can be. You’ve done everything right!  you’ve created great content, optimized your website, and submitted your sitemap – but for some reason, Google isn’t indexing your pages. This can be a frustrating message because it’s not always clear what it means or how to fix it.

Discovered - Currently Not Indexed

But luckily, this is usually easy to fix. In this article, we’ll take a look at some potential causes of such issues and how to fix this. So, without further ado let’s get into it.

Related: How To Fix Crawled – Currently Not Indexed Issue?

To understand and solve this problem, first, we need to understand how Google Search works. Generally, Google goes through four steps while showing any results on search engine results pages. Discover – Crawl – Index – Serve.

How Google Search Works
  • Discover: First, Google needs to discover new websites and web pages. It does this by following links from known pages.
  • Crawl: Next, Google’s crawler will visit the pages and gather every single piece of information added to the page. Then when it finds a new or updated page, it adds it to the Google index.
  • Index: This is where Google builds its index of pages and their content. The Google index is a database of all the pages Google has found and thinks are relevant to your search.
  • Serve: Finally, Google will serve the web pages to users. When you do a Google search, the Google search engine looks through the pages in the Google index and returns the results it thinks are most relevant to your search.

If you want to know about how Google search works in detail, please go through the following article by google search central: In-Depth Guide to How Google Search Works

What does discovered but currently not indexed mean?

This term is used to describe a situation where a search engine has found a web page but has not yet indexed its content. And this happens for many reasons which we will discuss later in the article. 

What does discovered but currently not indexed mean

What causes Discovered – Currently Not Indexed Issue?

  • Low-quality content: If a site has a lot of pages with little or no unique content, it’s likely that Google will not index all of the pages. This is because Google wants to deliver the best possible results to its users, and low-quality content is not considered to be the best.
  • Blocking by Robots.Txt file: If a website’s robots.txt file is blocking access to the Googlebot crawler, then the crawler will not be able to index the site’s pages. This can be easily fixed by editing the robots.txt file to allow access to the Googlebot crawler.
  • Error on Sitemap: A sitemap is an XML file that contains all of the URLs for a website. Search engines use it to discover pages on the web. If your sitemap contains an error, search engines may not be able to discover all of the pages on your website.
  • Poor Interlinking structure: This can happen when a website’s pages are not properly linked together, or when there are too many links pointing to the same page. This can confuse search engines and make it difficult for them to index all of the pages on a site.
  • Duplicate content issue: This means that you have the same or very similar content on more than one page of your website. Googlebot sees this as an attempt to spam the search results and will penalize your site for it. 
  • New website: If your website or blog is new this is normal and there’s nothing to worry about. Just keep publishing new content and Google will eventually catch up.
  • Server issues: This means that the server is taking too long to respond to requests from the search engine crawlers. This can be caused by a number of factors, including server load, network latency, and inefficient code.

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How To Fix Discovered – Currently Not Indexed Issue?

Find the affected pages

For this, first of all, you need to find the URL which is affected by the Discovered – Currently Not Indexed problem. 

To do this you can simply navigate to the “Pages” section of your google webmaster dashboard. And then click on “Discovered – Currently Not Indexed” message. Then you will see a list of pages that are affected by this issue.

How To Fix Discovered - Currently Not Indexed Issue.

Related: How to Fix ‘Text Too Small to Read’ Error

Test Live URL

Next, after you got the pages that are not being indexed, you have to go through the “Live Test” process. 

  • Click on the “URL inspection” option in your google webmaster dashboard
  • Paste the URL and hit Enter
  • Then you will be redirected to the Inspection result page. At the top right, you will see a button called “TEST LIVE URL”. Click it and wait for the result.
  • It will return the exact reasons why your pages are discovered but not being indexed. Now you have to check and fix them one by one. 

Related: How to Fix Content Wider Than Screen Error

Take Actions

  • Fix Robots.txt blocking issue: Your website’s robots.txt file might be blocking the search engine bots from crawling and indexing your website’s pages. So, check your robots.txt file and make sure that it’s not blocking the search engine bots.
  • Create or fix errors in sitemap:  A sitemap is a file that tells search engines what pages are on your website. If you have not created a sitemap for your site yet, you need to create it and submit it to Google. Or if there are any errors on your sitemap you need to find them, fix them and re-submit your sitemap to Google. There are many online tools available that you can use to create a new sitemap or fix errors inside your sitemap.
  • Remove Thin or low-quality content: Check your site for pages that contain thin or low-quality content and remove or consolidate them as needed. Even though, if these pages are discovered by search engines, they won’t rank well because they are not valuable to users.
  • Interlinking: One of the simplest ways to fix this issue is to start interlinking your pages. When you link to a page on your site, it sends a signal to Google that the page is important and should be indexed. 
  • Remove Duplicate Content: To fix this, you need to find all the pages with duplicate content and either remove the duplicate content or 301 redirect it to a single, canonical page.
  • Fix the server issue: If there’s an issue with your server, the first thing you need to do is contact your web host and let them know. They should be able to help you get your site indexed in case their server is the reason for this.
  • Social share: Share your content on as many social networks as possible to send the signal to Google that your content is valuable and deserves to be indexed in Google.
  • Request indexing:  Google provides a way to request indexing for new or recently updated content. This is done through the Request Indexing feature in the Search Console.

How to do it:

  • Go to the URL inspection section, paste the URL and hit enter. 
  • On the next page, you will see a “Request indexing” button. Just click it.

By manual requesting google to index your pages, It’s not guaranteed that it will work, though we can expect positive results by doing so. 

I hope the above guide helped you in fixing your Discovered – Currently Not Indexed issue. If you are still not able to fix it, please let me know through the comment box below! I will help as much as possible! 

Also check: Complete Technical SEO Audit Checklist For Beginners

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Bibek Sapkota

Hi, I'm Bibek Sapkota, a full-time blogger and SEO specialist with over a decade of experience. My blog focuses on how-to guides for blogging, SEO strategies, and making money online. I'm passionate about sharing valuable insights and helping others succeed in the digital world.

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