Index Coverage

A Google Search Console report that shows which pages on your site are indexed, which are excluded, and why — helping you diagnose crawling and indexing issues.

Index Coverage (now called the Indexing report in newer Search Console versions) gives you a URL-by-URL breakdown of how Google has processed your site. It classifies pages into four statuses: Error, Valid with warnings, Valid, and Excluded.

Key Statuses Explained

• Indexed — the page is in Google’s index and eligible to rank.
• Crawled – currently not indexed — Google has seen the page but chosen not to index it. Often signals thin or low-quality content.
• Discovered – currently not indexed — Google knows the URL exists but hasn’t crawled it yet, often due to crawl budget constraints.
• Excluded by noindex tag — the page has a noindex directive and is intentionally kept out of the index.
• Duplicate without canonical — Google found duplicate content and chose a different URL as the canonical.
• Soft 404 — the page returns a 200 status code but Google considers it to have no meaningful content.

How to Use the Report

Regularly audit the Index Coverage report to:

• Find important pages that are unexpectedly not indexed
• Identify crawl errors blocking Googlebot
• Spot duplicate content issues before they dilute your rankings
• Monitor the impact of site migrations or large content changes