Discovered - currently not indexed

The status is in the Page indexing report, under Why pages aren’t indexed. Google’s help page says the page was found but not crawled yet: typically Google wanted to crawl it, the crawl was expected to overload the site, and so it was rescheduled. That is why the report shows no last crawl date for these URLs.

Google found the address in a link or a sitemap and has not seen what is on it, so nothing about the page’s text or quality has been judged yet. The same help page reminds that not indexed is not necessarily bad, and that you should not expect every URL on a site to be indexed.

Export the list and sort it by folder and by parameter before judging. Then filter the report to the URLs in your sitemap: those are the ones you said you want indexed, and the ones worth your time.

Google’s crawl budget guide says how much it crawls a site depends on two things. The crawl capacity limit goes down when a site slows down or answers with server errors, and up when it answers consistently and quickly. Crawl demand depends on the site’s size, how often it changes, page quality and relevance. A page waiting in this status is often the capacity side: Google decided the server could not take more right then.

Search Console shows it in the Crawl Stats report, under Settings (only for a property at the root of the site). Look at:

• Host status: whether Google had trouble with robots.txt, DNS or connecting to the server in the period.
• Average response time, over everything Google fetched. Google says Googlebot throttles back when a site responds slowly, and when its server error rate rises.
• By response: the share of 5xx answers and of timeouts. A server that fails some of Google’s requests gets fewer of them.
• By purpose: Discovery is Google fetching a URL for the first time, Refresh a page it knows. Pages in this status are waiting for a discovery fetch.

The Trakis audit sees the same failures from its side: pages that answered with a server error (CRAWL-002) and pages it could not download at all after three tries, by cause (CRAWL-007). If your hosting cannot keep up, Google’s guide suggests adding server resources, if that makes sense for your business.

Google’s guide names what wastes it. Each of these keeps Googlebot busy with URLs that are not the pages you are waiting for:

• Duplicate content. Pages that repeat each other (CONTENT-008), and session IDs that give every visitor new addresses for the same pages (CRAWL-005).
• Long redirect chains, which Google says have a negative effect on crawling. The audit counts the hops on every address it follows (CRAWL-003).
• A sitemap that lists the wrong pages. Google reads the sitemap regularly and asks that it include the content you want crawled. One full of redirects, errors and noindexed pages sends the crawl there (CRAWL-010).
• Soft 404s: pages that say “not found” and answer 200. Google says they keep being crawled and waste the budget. Search Console lists them under their own status: Soft 404, and the fix for each kind.
• The same page many ways. Google’s examples are differently sorted versions of the same page, and infinite scrolling pages that duplicate what linked pages already show.

URL Inspection has a Request indexing button. It puts the page in the queue if it passes a quick check, but there is a daily limit, and Google says a request does not guarantee the page will be indexed. Use it for the few pages that matter most. For many pages, the same help page says the best choice is a sitemap, with the updated pages marked by <lastmod>.

Google says indexing typically takes a day or so, and can take much longer. It gives no time for this status to clear.

• Requesting indexing for hundreds of URLs. The daily limit stops it, and if the server is the reason, more requests do not add capacity.
• Validating the whole list. The help page says it might not always make sense to fix and validate a specific issue. Fix the cause, then let the next crawls clear it.
• Rewriting the pages. Google has not read them yet. Text matters once a page is crawled; while it waits here, the server and the URLs competing for the crawl are what decide.
• Moving the crawl around with robots.txt. Google’s guide says not to use robots.txt to reallocate crawl budget for a while; use it for pages you never want crawled at all. A page you want indexed, blocked, moves to “URL blocked by robots.txt” and is still not read.
• Noindex on the copies. It does not save crawling: Google says it still requests the page, then drops it.

The two statuses sit next to each other in the report. Discovered - currently not indexed is an address Google has not visited yet: the cause is the crawl. Crawled - currently not indexed is a page Google read and decided to leave out for now: the cause is the page. Crawled - currently not indexed: what to do.

Is it a penalty? No. Manual actions have their own report in Search Console. This status is Google scheduling its crawl.

Why is the last crawl date empty? Because Google has not crawled these URLs yet; the help page says so.

Do I need to worry about crawl budget? Google writes its guide for large sites, sites that change daily, and sites with a large share of URLs in this status. On a small site, a handful of new pages here is the ordinary case.

How long does it take? Google gives no time. A page leaves the status when Google crawls it; what it becomes then depends on the page.

The Trakis audit reads every page and reports what keeps the crawl busy or failing: server errors, pages it could not download, redirect chains, duplicate pages, session IDs and sitemap entries that should not be there, each counted once with the pages it covers. Create a free account and add your site, or see every Search Console status, explained.