Search
Google has crawled the pages it knows about
seo.gsc-discovered-not-crawled
Why this matters
Google keeps a list of pages it has found and works through it at a rate it decides. A page sitting on that list has never been fetched, so nothing about the page itself is the cause — it is not thin, it is not duplicated, it has not been judged at all. What holds the queue up is almost always the site as a whole: a server that responds slowly, far more URLs than there is real content, or pages nothing links to except the sitemap.
Who fixes it
A developer
Roughly how long
half a day
Care needed
Test before and after
How to fix it
Start with how fast the site answers, because that is what sets the rate Google is willing to crawl at — the Crawl Stats report in Search Console shows average response time and whether Google has been backing off. Then reduce the number of URLs competing for that rate: parameter variations, filter and sort combinations, tag and date archives and paginated series all consume it, and most of them do not need to be crawlable at all. Finally, link these pages from pages Google already visits often. A page reachable only from the sitemap is the last thing in the queue, because a sitemap says a page exists and an internal link says somebody thinks it matters.
How we score it
Failing this check takes up to 14 points off your search score. It is a fact about your site rather than a measurement, so it reads the same on every scan until you change something.
Does your site pass this one?
This check runs on every scan, along with the other 121. Free, no account, and you see the evidence for each result.
Check my siteOther search checks
- Canonical tags point somewhere validA canonical tag tells Google which address is the real one for a page. When it points somewhere wrong — another domain, a dead page, or the wrong protocol — Google follows it anyway, and the page you wanted indexed can be dropped in favour of one that does not exist.
- Content has been updated recentlySome content is meant to sit still, and age alone is not a fault. But prices, opening hours and staff pages that have not been touched in over a year are usually wrong by now — and a visitor who acts on the wrong opening hours does not come back to check whether the rest was right.
- Descriptions are a sensible lengthLong descriptions get truncated mid-sentence; very short ones waste the space you are given.
- Each page has exactly one title tagA page can only have one title. When there are several, the browser and Google each pick one — and they do not always pick the same one, so what you see in the tab may not be what appears in search.
- Each page has one main headingSeveral top-level headings makes the structure of the page ambiguous. Worth checking rather than urgent — modern HTML permits it, and Google handles it, but it usually signals that headings are being chosen for their size.
- Each search you rank for is served by one page rather than severalWhen several of your pages answer the same search, the things that decide ranking — links, engagement, relevance — are divided between them instead of accumulating on one. Google picks whichever it currently thinks is best and can change its mind week to week, and the result is that a search you should own is served by two or three pages, none of which does well. It is invisible from inside the site: every page looks fine on its own.