Index Coverage Report in Google Search Console: Complete Guide
The Index Coverage report in Google Search Console shows which pages from your site are indexed and which are not, along with the specific reason for each status. One thing to know before you go looking for it: in January 2023 Google renamed this report to Page indexing, and that is what you will see in the Search Console sidebar today under Indexing → Pages. The name changed and the summary was simplified, but the diagnostic job is the same, and most people still search for it by its old name.
How the Report Groups Your Pages
The current report splits every known URL into just two buckets. Indexed: pages Google has indexed and can serve. Not indexed: everything else, broken out by reason - for example 'Crawled - currently not indexed', 'Discovered - currently not indexed', 'Not found (404)', 'Page with redirect', 'Excluded by noindex tag', 'Alternate page with proper canonical tag', and 'Soft 404'. Each reason is also labelled by Source: 'Website' means it is something you control and can fix, while 'Google systems' means Google crawled the page and chose not to index it - which is a judgement about the page, not a technical error you can patch. Older guides describe four categories - Error, Valid with warnings, Valid and Excluded. Those were retired with the January 2023 rename; if a tutorial still shows them, it predates the current Search Console.
Common Error Statuses
Server error (5xx): Your server returned an error when Googlebot tried to access the page. Fix your server configuration. Redirect error: The page has too many redirects, a redirect loop, or a redirect chain that is too long. Submitted URL blocked by robots.txt: A URL in your sitemap is blocked from crawling. Remove it from your sitemap or fix robots.txt. Submitted URL marked noindex: Your sitemap includes a page with a noindex directive. Remove it from the sitemap.
Common Excluded Statuses
Crawled - currently not indexed: Google crawled but chose not to index. Improve content quality. Discovered - currently not indexed: Google found the URL but has not crawled it yet. Duplicate without canonical: Multiple pages with the same content and no canonical tag indicating the preferred version. Alternate page with proper canonical tag: A non-canonical page that is correctly pointing to its canonical. This is expected and not a problem.
How to Use the Report to Fix Issues
Click any reason to see the affected URLs, then use the URL Inspection tool on individual pages to see exactly what Google saw and when it last crawled. Fix the underlying issue, hit Validate Fix so Google re-checks the whole set, and watch the report over the following weeks. Prioritise by Source rather than by row size: start with 'Website' reasons, because those are genuinely yours to fix. Treat a large 'Crawled - currently not indexed' count differently - Google reached those pages and declined them, so re-submitting them changes nothing; the only thing that moves that number is making the pages more worth indexing than they were.