Key takeaways
- A practical guide to the GSC status "Crawled - currently not indexed": how to tell technical blockers from prioritization, and the few changes that reliably move URLs into the index
Table of Contents
"Crawled - currently not indexed" usually means Google can fetch your page.
So the real question is not "what keyword should I add?"
It is:
- Is this URL blocked or duplicated? (technical)
- Or is Google delaying storage because the site doesn't express priority yet? (prioritization)
If you want a map of all the common GSC statuses, start here:
Related reading:
Step 1: eliminate the hard gates (15 minutes)
1) Confirm it returns 200 OK consistently
In GSC URL Inspection:
- check the final status code
- watch for redirect chains
- watch for intermittent 4xx/5xx
If the URL is unstable, Google often keeps it out of the index.
2) Make sure there is no noindex
Check both:
<meta name="robots" content="noindex">X-Robots-Tag: noindex
3) Check the canonical
If the canonical points elsewhere, Google is doing what you told it.
Common mistakes:
- canonical points to a URL that redirects
- canonical points to a 404/410
- canonicals differ between server and client render
If you are fighting canonicals/duplicates, these two statuses matter:
4) Rule out "soft 404" behavior
A 200 page can still be treated like "not found" if it looks empty.
- Deep dive: Soft 404: fixes and validation
Step 2: if it's not technical, assume it's priority
When the URL is clean (200, indexable, correct canonical, not thin), the bottleneck is usually:
A) Weak internal hierarchy
If the post is only reachable from /blog, Google may crawl it but never promote it.
High leverage pattern:
- Topic hub в†’ supporting list
- supporting post в†’ links back to hub + pillar
Start here:
B) Crawl debt / URL noise
If the site has lots of low-value URLs (legacy slugs, archives, feed variants), Google becomes conservative.
If you recently pivoted topics, clean this first:
C) "Incremental value" is unclear
Even accurate content can be skipped if it feels like a generic summary.
What tends to get indexed faster:
- checklists with decision points
- specific constraints ("for new sites", "for migrated sites")
- concrete examples and "what not to do"
The minimal action plan
- Fix hard gates (status, noindex, canonical, soft 404).
- Promote the URL from a hub/pillar.
- Reduce crawl debt.
- Request indexing only for a small set of core pages.
- Wait 3–14 days (GSC is delayed by design).
FAQ
Is it worth requesting indexing again and again?
No. Repeated requests rarely help. If the bottleneck is prioritization, the fix is signals (links + coherence), not more requests.
How do I validate progress?
- URL Inspection: "URL is on Google"
- Pages report: indexed count trending up
- Performance report: impressions increase for the cluster (not just one URL)
Next in SEO & Search
Up next:
Discovered - currently not indexed: Why it happens (and what works on new sites)A practical guide to the GSC status 'Discovered - currently not indexed': what it really signals (crawl allocation), why it's common after pivots/migrations, and the few actions that reliably increase indexing.