Troubleshooting Google Indexing Issues: Why Your Website Isn’t Being Crawled and How to Fix It
Launching a new website is an exciting milestone, especially for developers sharing engineering blogs and tutorials. However, ensuring that your site is discoverable by search engines like Google is crucial for attracting visitors and establishing your online presence. Sometimes, despite submitting your sitemap, your pages may not appear in search results, leading to frustration and confusion.
Understanding the Issue
In your case, you’ve developed a site dedicated to engineering blogs and tutorials, and you’ve submitted your sitemap approximately one month ago. The sitemap includes around 82 pages, which Google successfully identifies. However, the status for these pages shows as “Discovered – currently not indexed.” This means that Google has found these pages but has not yet added them to its index, preventing them from appearing in search results.
Possible Causes
Several factors can contribute to this issue:
- Crawl Budget Limitations: Google allocates a specific crawl budget per website, which can impact how often and how many pages are crawled.
- Low-Quality or Duplicate Content: Thin, duplicate, or low-value content can deter Google from indexing pages.
- Technical SEO Issues: Problems like improper robots.txt directives, noindex tags, or server errors can prevent pages from being indexed.
- Lack of Engagement Signals: Limited backlinks or low traffic may influence indexing priorities.
- Site Structure and Internal Linking: Poor navigation can hinder Google’s ability to discover and crawl all pages.
Recommended Steps to Resolve the Issue
To improve your site’s indexing status, consider the following actionable steps:
- Verify Google Search Console Settings
- Ensure your site is verified in Google Search Console.
- Check the Crawl Stats report to understand crawling patterns.
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Review the Coverage report for any errors or warnings.
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Inspect Individual Pages
- Use the URL Inspection tool to identify any indexing issues.
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Check for ‘noindex’ tags or robots.txt disallow directives that may block crawling.
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Enhance Content Quality
- Ensure that all pages contain valuable, unique, and well-structured content.
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Avoid duplicate content and thin pages.
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Improve Technical SEO
- Optimize your site’s structure for better crawlability.
- Ensure proper internal linking to distribute PageRank and aid discovery.
- Fix any server errors or slow-loading pages.
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