Why is Google Search Console telling me to fix “indexing problems”?

You opened Google Search Console, maybe for the first time, and were greeted by a screen full of red and yellow warnings: “indexing problems”, “Crawled – currently not indexed”, “Excluded”. The natural reaction is panic: “Is my site badly broken? Is Google penalizing me?”

The good news is that, in most cases, nothing is broken. Search Console isn’t reporting defects — it’s showing you how Google sees your site: which pages it found, which it decided to put in the index, and which it left aside. Many of these “problems” are completely normal and shouldn’t be touched. A few genuinely matter. In this article I’ll explain what each message means, which ones are worth fixing, and which you can safely ignore.

What Google is actually trying to tell you

Search Console splits your pages into two big groups: indexed (they show up in Google results) and not indexed (Google knows about them but chose not to display them). A report full of “excluded” pages doesn’t automatically mean you have a problem.

Think of Google as a librarian. First it visits your site and reads the pages (crawling). Then it decides which ones deserve a spot on the shelf so people can find them (indexing). A good librarian doesn’t shelve everything: duplicate pages, empty ones, or ones you marked as “don’t show this” are left aside.

So the first question isn’t “how do I fix everything?” but “which of these pages did I actually want in Google and they’re not showing?”. The rest, most often, is normal noise.

“Crawled – currently not indexed”: the most common and the most confusing

This message means: Google read the page but decided, at least for now, not to put it in the index. It’s not a technical error. It’s a value judgment.

The most common real causes:

• Thin content, or too similar to other pages (Google doesn’t see why it deserves a separate spot).
• A new page on a young site with no links pointing to it — Google waits and often changes its mind on its own after a few weeks.
• Auto-generated pages (filters, internal search results, parameter variants) that add nothing new.

What to do: check whether the page truly deserves indexing. If it does, improve the content, add internal links to it from important pages, and request re-indexing. If it doesn’t, leave it alone — Google is right.

“Discovered – not indexed” and “Excluded”: the nuances that matter

“Discovered – currently not indexed” is one step lower: Google knows the page exists (it found the link) but hasn’t even gotten around to reading it. This usually appears on sites with many pages or on slow servers — Google delays crawling so it doesn’t overload you.

“Excluded” is an umbrella covering many situations, most of them intentional:

• “Alternate page with proper canonical tag” — normal, you told Google another page is the main one.
• “Duplicate without user-selected canonical” — Google picked a version itself; worth checking it picked the right one.
• “Page with redirect” or “Not found (404)” — normal for old, moved, or deleted pages.
• “Blocked by robots.txt” or “Excluded by ‘noindex’ tag” — you asked for this; a problem only if you accidentally blocked a page you wanted indexed.

The simple rule: only worry when a page you WANT in Google shows up here.

How to fix them, step by step, without breaking anything

Don’t hit “Validate fix” at random. Work in order:

• Make a list of the pages you actually want to see in Google (services, contact, product pages, important articles).
• In Search Console, use “URL Inspection” on each — it tells you exactly why it isn’t indexed.
• Fix the real cause: content too short → flesh it out; no links → link it from your menu or other pages; a “noindex” tag left by mistake → remove it; slow page → improve speed.
• Only then request re-indexing from “URL Inspection” → “Request Indexing”.

Be patient: indexing isn’t instant. It can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, especially on a new site. Don’t resubmit the same page every day — it doesn’t speed anything up and can muddle the reporting.

When it’s the site’s fault and when you need help

Sometimes the problem really is technical and repeats across many pages: a sitemap pointing to wrong URLs, a “noindex” left over from building the site, redirect chains, a server that responds slowly, or a platform that generates hundreds of duplicate pages. These aren’t solved page by page — they need a change in how the site is built.

This is where how the site was made from the start matters. At MPO Web Studio we build technically clean sites: a correct sitemap, clear structure, good speed, and pages designed to be indexable rather than improvised. We work remotely across the country and show you a pre-built demo first, so you see exactly what you’re getting.

If you look at Search Console and can’t tell what’s normal and what’s a real problem, message us on WhatsApp. We’ll go through the report together and tell you honestly what’s worth fixing and what you can ignore.