“Discovered – currently not indexed” means Google knows the URL exists but has not crawled it yet. “Crawled – currently not indexed” means Google crawled the page and decided not to index it, for now. Neither is an error with a setting to switch off. They are Google saying it has not prioritized the page, and the fix is to give it reasons to.
Both statuses appear under Indexing → Pages in Search Console. On WordPress they tend to fill up with the same kinds of URLs, which makes them quicker to work through than they look.
What each status means
Discovered – currently not indexed. Google found the URL, through a link or your sitemap, but has not fetched it. Google’s help page puts this down to scheduling: it wanted to crawl the URL, expected that doing so then would overload the site, and rescheduled. That is why the report shows no last crawl date for these URLs. In practice, on a small WordPress site, this status usually reflects how little the URL is linked rather than server load.
Crawled – currently not indexed. Google fetched the page and left it out of the index. Its documentation says such a page may or may not be indexed in the future and that there is no need to resubmit it. Google does not say why for a specific page, but the common thread is a page that adds little over what Google already has: thin, duplicated elsewhere, or not clearly useful for any search.
First, rule out a blocker
Before treating these as quality problems, make sure nothing is actually stopping the page. A noindex, a robots.txt rule or a canonical pointing elsewhere produces a different status, but the report can lag behind a change you made.
Why WordPress pages end up here
- Thin archives. Tag pages with one or two posts, author archives on a single-author site, date archives and attachment pages. WordPress creates these automatically and they repeat content that lives elsewhere.
- Paginated archives.
/blog/page/14/is a list of excerpts, and Google often leaves deep pages like it out of the index. That is fine, as long as it can still crawl them to reach the posts they list, so keep them indexable (more in step 1 below). - Parameter URLs.
?replytocom=links from threaded comments, internal search results (?s=), and filter or sort URLs on WooCommerce shops. - Orphaned or poorly linked posts. A post drops off the homepage and the first category page within days, and if nothing else links to it, the sitemap is the only way Google hears about it.
- Overlapping posts. Two or three posts targeting the same topic, or location pages that differ only by the town name. Google indexes the strongest and leaves the rest.
- New sites and new posts. Google has not got to them yet. This resolves on its own if the site is well linked.
- Slow or failing responses. If your server errors or slows down under crawling, Google crawls less. Settings → Crawl stats in Search Console shows response times and host status.
Work through the export, not the count
Open Indexing → Pages, click the status in the “Why pages aren’t indexed” table, and use Export at the top right. The export holds up to 1,000 example URLs, which is plenty to see the patterns. In a spreadsheet, add a column that labels each URL by pattern (contains /tag/, contains ?, contains /page/, contains /attachment/ or an image name, everything else), then count each label.
Here is an illustrative result for a 400-post WordPress blog with 1,900 URLs under “Discovered – currently not indexed”:
| Pattern | URLs | What to do |
|---|---|---|
?replytocom= comment links | 1,050 | Nothing; they carry a canonical to the post |
| Tag archives | 420 | Noindex tags, and drop them from the sitemap |
/page/2/ and deeper | 260 | Keep indexable; link to the posts they list |
| Attachment pages | 140 | Redirect attachment pages to the file (see below) |
| Posts | 30 | The real work: links and content |
The big number turns into 30 posts worth an afternoon. The other groups are either harmless or fixed with one setting. That is the usual shape on WordPress, which is why reading the patterns first saves time.
Attachment pages are a WordPress leftover: every uploaded image gets its own page with almost nothing on it. WordPress 6.4 switched them off for new sites, but older sites still have them. In Yoast SEO, Settings → Advanced → Media pages controls them (off means the URL redirects to the file); in Rank Math, General Settings → Links → Redirect Attachments.
How to fix “Discovered – currently not indexed”
- Decide whether each URL deserves to be indexed. Group the example URLs by pattern. Thin tag archives usually do not: noindex them in your SEO plugin (Yoast SEO: Settings → Categories & tags → Tags, switch off Show tags in search results; Rank Math: Titles & Meta → Tags, then tick No Index in the robots meta settings) and make sure they are not in your sitemap.
?replytocom=URLs come from the reply links in threaded comments; Yoast SEO strips the parameter by default, and elsewhere the canonical tag on those URLs points to the post, so they can be left alone. Leave paginated archives (/page/2/and onward) indexable even when they show up here. Google’s pagination guidance is to give each page its own canonical, because those pages are how crawlers reach older posts; the fix for a deep archive is better links to the posts themselves. - Link to the ones that do. Add links from posts that already get search traffic and are on the same topic, from the relevant category page, and from any hub page you have. A link in the body of a related post, with words that describe the page, usually does more than another footer or sidebar link.
- Keep the sitemap clean. It should list only URLs you want indexed: no redirects, no noindexed archives, no 404s. The sitemap checker samples your sitemap and flags those.
- Check server health. If Crawl stats shows many server errors or slow responses, talk to your host and check any security or firewall plugin that might be throttling Googlebot.
- Request indexing for a few important URLs. In URL Inspection, inspect the URL and click Request indexing. It is limited per day, so save it for the pages that matter.
How to fix “Crawled – currently not indexed”
- Compare the page with what ranks. Search the query the page is meant for. If the results already answer it better, the page needs to offer something they do not: specifics, a worked example, a clearer answer.
- Merge overlapping posts. If two posts cover the same ground, combine the best of both into one, 301 redirect the other URL to it, and update internal links. One strong page beats two that compete.
- Expand or rewrite thin pages. A 200-word post that restates its title rarely gets indexed. Answer the question fully, in the words people search with.
- Add internal links. The same as above: links from relevant pages that Google already values.
- Then request indexing for the improved URL.
If the URL is a low-value archive you do not need in search, noindexing it is a fix too. It stops appearing as a problem and stops pulling crawl attention from your posts.
Troubleshooting by symptom
The count keeps growing. Something on the site generates new URLs faster than Google wants them: WooCommerce filter and sort links (?filter_color=, ?orderby=), an events calendar with endless “next month” links, or internal search results linked from somewhere. Find the pattern in the export and stop it at the source, with noindex on those URLs or a robots.txt rule if Google should not crawl them at all.
New posts sit in Discovered for weeks. Check three things. Is the post linked from somewhere Google visits often, such as the homepage or a category page with traffic? Is it in the sitemap Search Console has read (Indexing → Sitemaps shows the last read date)? Does Settings → Crawl stats → Host status show problems with robots.txt fetching, DNS or server connectivity? A failing host check makes Google slow down across the whole site.
Indexed pages slide into “Crawled – currently not indexed”. Google re-evaluates pages over time, and this often shows up after a core update. Check whether another page of yours now ranks for the same searches; if so, merge the two. Otherwise, compare the page with what ranks today and update it.
The sitemap report says many URLs are not indexed. Click into the sitemap, then See page indexing, to get the same report filtered to that sitemap. A gap between submitted and indexed is normal; what matters is whether the missing URLs are posts you care about or the archive patterns above.
Request indexing says the quota is exceeded. Google limits how many URLs you can submit a day. Wait a day, and save requests for pages you have improved.
Validate the fix in Search Console
For a single URL, inspect it and look at Last crawl and the indexing verdict. After Google recrawls an improved page, it either becomes indexed or stays in the report. For a pattern you fixed (for example, noindexing tag archives), open the status in Indexing → Pages and click Validate fix. Validation for these two statuses can take a while, because Google still decides when to crawl. The validation moves through Started, then Looking good if none of the URLs rechecked so far still has the issue, and ends at Passed or Failed. “Failed” only means some URLs are still in the status; for these two statuses that is common, and it is not a penalty. Judge progress by the posts you care about, one URL Inspection at a time, rather than by the total.
How RankHive handles this
On a connected WordPress site, RankHive inspects your posts and pages with Search Console’s URL Inspection data every week and flags the ones that are not showing up in Google but have content worth indexing. For a page that is poorly linked, it drafts internal links from your pages that already get traffic, with the exact sentence where each link goes. For a thin page, it drafts the section or rewrite the page needs. You approve each change before the RankHive plugin writes it to WordPress, and every change is logged in the Change Log with a Revert button.
Related reading
- Search Console errors on WordPress: every Page indexing status and its fix.
- Fix Duplicate Without User-Selected Canonical: when the report says a page is a duplicate instead.
- How to automate WordPress internal linking: adding links at scale without making a mess.
- WordPress technical SEO: the settings that decide what WordPress exposes to crawlers.
Your job is to decide which pages deserve the index and give those pages links and substance. Work through the patterns by hand with the steps above, or let RankHive find the pages Google is skipping each week and draft the links and rewrites for you to approve.