Key takeaways
- A single-intent entry page: the most common reasons Google does not index URLs (crawl blocks, canonical ambiguity, duplication, low priority, and “systemic irrelevance”), plus the fastest way to verify which gate you are failing
Table of Contents
If a page is “not indexed”, it’s rarely a mystery.
It failed one of the gates that decide whether a URL is worth storing.
If you want the full model first, start here:
The 7 common reasons (ordered by leverage)
1) Crawlability issues (Google can’t fetch a stable 200)
Fast check: URL Inspection → “Test live URL” + verify the final status code and redirect chain.
2) Robots / noindex blocks
Fast check: view source for noindex, confirm robots.txt isn’t blocking the URL, and confirm you’re not accidentally serving different HTML to bots.
3) Canonical ambiguity (Google doesn’t trust your “representative URL”)
This is the silent killer: even if the page is crawlable, it can be excluded as a duplicate/alternate.
Fast check:
- Compare internal links, sitemap URL, canonical tag, and final URL after redirects.
- If they disagree, Google learns: “this site is ambiguous”.
Read:
4) Duplication (near-duplicates across parameters/routes)
Fast check: search your site for multiple URLs that represent the same intent (filters, UTMs, trailing slash, HTTP/HTTPS, etc.).
5) Orphan / low-priority placement (the site doesn’t “acknowledge” the page)
A sitemap-only URL is discoverable, but often not important.
Read:
6) Low incremental value (thin / redundant relative to what’s already indexed)
This is not a moral judgement. It’s cost vs value. If the index already has “enough”, the system becomes conservative.
7) Systemic irrelevance (the page has no role in your graph)
The most common root cause is not “bad SEO”. It’s that your architecture doesn’t express meaning:
- no cluster
- no hub
- no “next step”
The fix is usually: make the page part of a small, explicit system.
System context
- Indexing and visibility (guide)
- Google indexing explained (pillar)
- Canonical vs duplicate content
- Orphan pages SEO
Next step
If you want to understand why “technically correct” pages can still disappear, the next layer is selection vs storage: