Index Coverage Status Report

Search Console

This report shows the indexing state of all URLs that Google has visited, or tried to visit, in your property. The summary page shows the results grouped by status (error, warning, or valid) and reason. You can click on a table row to see all URLs with the same status or reason and see more details about the issue.

Ideally, you should see a gradually increasing count of valid indexed pages as your site grows. You should not expect all URLs on your site to be indexed. Your goal is to get one version of each page indexed - canonical version. Any duplicate or alternate pages will be labeled Excluded in the report. You can find the canonical for any URL by running the URL Inspection tool.

Four Types of Status

Each page can have one of the following general status classes:

1. Error: The page has not been indexed. You should concentrate on these issues first.

2. Warning: The page is indexed, or was until recently, but has an issue that you should be aware of.

3. Excluded: The page is not included in the index, but Google don't think that is an error. The page might be in an intermediate stage of the indexing process, or it is deliberately excluded (for example, by a noindex directive) and is therefore behaving as expected.

4. Valid: The page was indexed.

Reason: Each status (valid, warning, error, excluded) has a specific reason for that status. Data in the table is grouped by reason and each row can describe one or more URLs.

Status Reasons for Error

Pages with errors have not been indexed.

Server error (5xx): Your server returned a 500-level error when the page was requested.

Redirect error: The URL was a redirect error. Could be one of the following types: it was a redirect chain that was too long; it was a redirect loop; the redirect URL eventually exceeded the max URL length; there was a bad or empty URL in the redirect chain.

Submitted URL blocked by robots.txt: You submitted this page for indexing, but the page is blocked by robots.txt. Try testing your page using the robots.txt tester.

Submitted URL marked ‘noindex’: You submitted this page for indexing, but the page has a 'noindex' directive either in a meta tag or HTTP header. If you want this page to be indexed, you must remove the tag or HTTP header.

Submitted URL seems to be a Soft 404: You submitted this page for indexing, but the server returned what seems to be a soft 404.

Submitted URL returns unauthorized request (401): You submitted this page for indexing, but Google got a 401 (not authorized) response. Either remove authorization requirements for this page, or else allow Googlebot to access your pages by verifying its identity.

Submitted URL not found (404): You submitted a non-existent URL for indexing.

Submitted URL has crawl issue: You submitted this page for indexing, and Google encountered an unspecified crawling error that doesn't fall into any of the other reasons. Try debugging your page using the URL Inspection tool.

Status Reasons for Warning

Pages with a warning status might require your attention, and may or may not have been indexed, according to the specific result.

Indexed, though blocked by robots.txt: The page was indexed, despite being blocked by robots.txt; Google always respects robots.txt, but this doesn't help if someone else links to it. This is marked as a warning because Google is not sure if you intended to block the page from search results. If you do want to block this page, robots.txt is not the correct mechanism to avoid being indexed. To avoid being indexed you should either use 'noindex' or prohibit anonymous access to the page using auth. 

Status Reasons for Valid

Pages with a valid status have been indexed.

Submitted and indexed: You submitted the URL for indexing, and it was indexed.

Indexed, not submitted in sitemap: The URL was discovered by Google and indexed.

Indexed; consider marking as canonical: The URL was indexed. It has duplicate URLs, but Google considers this one to be canonical. It is not explicitly marked as canonical, and so Google recommends explicitly marking it as canonical.

Status Reasons for Excluded

These pages are not indexed. These pages are either duplicates of indexed pages, or blocked from indexing by some mechanism on your site, or otherwise not indexed for a reason that is not an error.

Excluded by ‘noindex’ tag: When Google tried to index the page it encountered a 'noindex' directive and therefore did not index it. If you want this page to be indexed, you should remove that 'noindex' directive.

Blocked by page removal tool: The page is currently blocked by a URL removal request. Removal requests are only good for about 90 days after the removal date. After that period, Googlebot may go back and index the page even if you do not submit another index request. If you don't want the page indexed, use 'noindex', require authorization for the page, or remove the page.

Blocked by robots.txt: This page was blocked to Googlebot with a robots.txt file. You can verify this using the robots.txt tester.

Blocked due to unauthorized request (401): The page was blocked to Googlebot by a request for authorization (401 response). If you do want Googlebot to be able to crawl this page, either remove authorization requirements, or allow Googlebot to access your page.

Crawl anomaly: An unspecified anomaly occurred when fetching this URL. This could mean a 4xx- or 5xx-level response code; try fetching the page using the URL Inspection tool to see if it encounters any fetch issues. The page was not indexed.

Crawled - currently not indexed: The page was crawled by Google, but not indexed. It may or may not be indexed in the future; no need to resubmit this URL for crawling.

Discovered - currently not indexed: The page was found by Google, but not crawled yet. Typically, Google tried to crawl the URL but the site was overloaded; therefore Google had to reschedule the crawl. This is why the last crawl date is empty on the report.

Alternate page with proper canonical tag: This page is a duplicate of a page that Google recognizes as canonical. This page correctly points to the canonical page, so there is nothing for you to do.

Duplicate without user-selected canonical: This page has duplicates, none of which is marked canonical. Google thinks this page is not the canonical one. You should explicitly mark the canonical for this page. Inspecting this URL should show the Google-selected canonical URL.

Duplicate non-HTML page: This non-HTML page (for example, a PDF file) is a duplicate of another page that Google has marked as canonical. Typically only the canonical URL will be shown in Google Search. If you like, you can specify a canonical page using the Link HTTP header in a response.

Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user: This page is marked as canonical for a set of pages, but Google thinks another URL makes a better canonical. Google has indexed the page that it considers canonical rather than this one. Inspecting this URL should show the Google-selected canonical URL.

Not found (404): This page returned a 404 error when requested. Google discovered this URL without any explicit request or sitemap. Google might have discovered the URL as a link from another site, or possibly the page existed before and was deleted. Googlebot will probably continue to try this URL for some period of time; there is no way to tell Googlebot to permanently forget a URL, although it will crawl it less and less often. 404 responses are not a problem, if intentional. If your page has moved, use a 301 redirect to the new location.

Page removed because of legal complaint: The page was removed from the index because of a legal complaint.

Page with redirect: The URL is a redirect, and therefore was not added to the index.

Queued for crawling: The page is in the crawling queue; check back in a few days to see if it has been crawled.

Soft 404: The page request returns a soft 404 response. This means that it returns a user-friendly "not found" message without a corresponding 404 response code. Google recommends returning a 404 response code for truly "not found" pages.

Submitted URL dropped: You submitted this page for indexing, but it was dropped from the index for an unspecified reason.

Duplicate, submitted URL not selected as canonical: The URL is one of a set of duplicate URLs without an explicitly marked canonical page. You explicitly asked this URL to be indexed, but because it is a duplicate, and Google thinks that another URL is a better candidate for canonical, Google did not index this URL.