Google responds to crawled, unindexed errors

Recall we reported that Google is investigating the reports of SEOs who are seeing an increase in the types of crawled, unindexed notifications in the Google Search Console reports when the pages may actually be indexed? Google’s answer is that there are different delays in generating reports in Search Console.

In short, there were many examples of URLs in Google Search Console showing the status of the “Crawled, Unindexed” report with the most recent crawl dates, which are actually indexed URLs. The problem, according to Google, is that the coverage report updates slower than the URL inspection tool. Google called “This is because the index coverage reporting data is updated at a different (and slower) rate than URL checking.”

Google said they should trust the URL inspection tool more, Google wrote, “The results shown in the URL inspection are recent and should be considered authoritative if they conflict with the index coverage report.” The data shown in the index coverage should reflect the exact status of a page within a few days if the status changes, “explained Google.

Here are these tweets:

This is because the index coverage reporting data is updated at a different (and slower) rate than URL checking. The results shown in the URL Checker are more recent and should be used as authoritative if they conflict with the Index Coverage Report. (2/4)

– Google Search Center (@googlesearchc) October 11, 2021

As always, thanks for the feedback 🙏, we will look for ways to reduce this discrepancy so that our reports and tools are always aligned and fresh! (4/4)

– Google Search Center (@googlesearchc) October 11, 2021

Thanks to Daniel Waisberg from Google for the research.

Forum discussion at Twitter.