Index Coverage Report
The Index Coverage report (now called the Pages report in Google Search Console) shows the indexing status of every URL Google knows about on a site, grouped into categories like Indexed, Not Indexed, and Excluded, each with specific sub-reasons.
Updated
November 12, 2026
Category
SEO Glossary
This report is the single most direct way to diagnose site-wide indexing problems, since it breaks down exactly why URLs aren't indexed — common reasons include 'Discovered - currently not indexed' (Google found it but hasn't prioritized crawling/indexing it yet), 'Crawled - currently not indexed' (Google crawled it and chose not to index it, often a quality signal), 'Duplicate without user-selected canonical,' and 'Blocked by robots.txt.' Reviewing this report regularly (not just after a traffic drop) catches structural indexing problems early — a sudden spike in 'Crawled - currently not indexed' pages, for instance, is often an early warning sign worth investigating before it shows up as a broader traffic decline.
Example
A monthly Search Console review catches a rising trend of pages marked 'Crawled - currently not indexed' after a bulk content push, prompting a quality review before the pattern spreads to the rest of the site.
Related terms
Related terms
Related Reading
404 Error
A 404 error is the standard HTTP status code returned when a requested page doesn't exist on the server — the classic 'page not found' response.
A/B Testing (SEO)
A/B testing in SEO is the practice of showing two versions of a page element — usually a title tag, meta description, or on-page element — to see which one earns a better click-through rate or ranking outcome.
AI Citation
An AI citation happens when an AI assistant like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, or Gemini references or links to a specific page as the source for part of its answer.
