By Shad Super in Indexing —

Indexing Triage Checklist (Free): Fix "Discovered — Currently Not Indexed"

A step-by-step checklist to diagnose why pages aren’t getting indexed—and what to do first (without guessing).

When Google shows "Discovered — currently not indexed", it’s tempting to jump straight to "request indexing." Most of the time, that’s not the real fix.

This checklist gives you a fast, repeatable triage system: what to check first, what signals matter, and what changes are most likely to move pages from discovered → crawled → indexed.

Before you start: pick a sample set

  • Choose 10–25 affected URLs (mix of templates, sections, and publish dates).
  • Confirm they return 200 OK and are not blocked by robots/noindex.

Indexing triage checklist (highest-leverage first)

  1. Indexing eligibility: is the page indexable (noindex, canonical pointing elsewhere, blocked resources)?
  2. Content quality threshold: is this page meaningfully different from similar pages, or is it thin/duplicative?
  3. Internal link discovery: does the page have at least a few contextual internal links from relevant pages?
  4. Crawl paths: how deep is it from the homepage? Are there dead-end sections?
  5. Sitemaps: is the URL in the right sitemap, and is the sitemap clean (valid XML, correct lastmod)?
  6. Rendering + performance: does the page render primary content without heavy client-side blockers?
  7. External signals (optional): are there any backlinks or mentions that would help Google prioritize crawling?

Copy/paste worksheet (fill this out for each URL)

URL:
Template/type:
Publish/last updated:
Indexing status (GSC):
Canonical:
Robots/noindex checks:
Thin/duplicate risk (notes):
Internal links in (count + best sources):
Crawl depth estimate:
In sitemap? (Y/N):
Render/perf red flags:
Next action (1-2):

What usually works fastest

  • Add internal links first from already-crawled, relevant pages. This improves discovery and often triggers crawling without "index request" spam.
  • Improve the page’s uniqueness: add original examples, data, or a tighter angle that’s not already covered elsewhere.
  • Fix sitemap hygiene: clean XML, accurate lastmod, and avoid including non-canonical URLs.

Internal links are one of the most reliable levers for moving "discovered" pages into the crawl/index pipeline—especially on large content sites.

Linkbot helps you generate and deploy relevant internal links at scale, so you can run this checklist and actually ship fixes in days—not weeks.