Google Crawl Errors
Search & Indexing Errors
Google tried to read your site and kept hitting walls.
Search Console's Pages report lists errors — server errors, redirect errors, soft 404s, or “Crawled, currently not indexed” — and the number of indexed pages is falling.
What it actually means
Crawling and indexing are separate steps. Google first has to fetch a page, then decide whether to list it. Crawl errors are failures at the first step: it tried to read something and could not.
Not every reported error is a problem. Google reports what it found, including URLs you deliberately removed. The skill is separating the errors that cost you traffic from the noise that is simply a record of ordinary housekeeping.
The one that deserves the most attention is rarely an error at all — “Crawled, currently not indexed” means Google read the page and chose not to list it. That is a quality judgment, not a technical fault.
What usually causes it
Most likely first.
- 1
Server errors during crawling
The site was slow, overloaded, or down when Google visited. Often invisible to you because your own visits succeeded.
- 2
Redirect chains and loops
Google follows a limited number of hops. A chain of redirects wastes crawl budget and eventually fails.
- 3
Soft 404s
A page returns a success status but has effectively no content, so Google treats it as missing anyway.
- 4
Blocked resources
CSS or JavaScript disallowed in robots.txt, so the rendered page looks broken to the crawler.
- 5
Thin or duplicated content
The cause behind most “crawled, currently not indexed” reports. Nothing is technically broken; the page simply is not worth listing.
How to fix it
Work through these in order. Take a backup before you change anything.
Step 1 — Sort by impact, not by count
A hundred errors on retired tag pages matter far less than three on your service pages. Start with URLs that earn or should earn traffic.
Step 2 — Use URL Inspection on a real example
Inspect one affected URL. It shows the fetch result, the rendered page, and the exact reason it was not indexed.
Step 3 — Fix server errors first
These are the genuinely damaging ones. Check whether errors cluster at particular times, which usually means capacity rather than code.
Step 4 — Flatten redirect chains
Point old URLs directly at their final destination rather than through two or three intermediate hops.
Step 5 — Improve or remove thin pages
For “crawled, currently not indexed”, the answer is editorial. Make the page genuinely useful, merge it into a stronger one, or noindex it deliberately.
When to stop and call someone
Call someone if server errors are frequent or clustered, since that indicates a hosting or performance problem rather than an SEO one, or if a large share of your important pages sit in “crawled, currently not indexed” — that is a content and structure problem that will not resolve on its own.
Frequently asked
They are failures Google encountered while trying to fetch pages on your site — server errors, redirect problems, soft 404s, and blocked resources. They are reported in Search Console's Pages report, and they mean a page could not be read rather than that it was rejected.
No. Many are simply a record of URLs you removed on purpose, and clearing them changes nothing. Prioritize errors on pages that earn traffic or are meant to, and treat errors on retired or trivial URLs as background noise.
Google fetched the page successfully and decided not to list it. That is a quality judgment rather than a technical error, usually pointing at thin, duplicated, or low-value content. The fix is editorial: make the page genuinely useful or consolidate it.
A page that returns a success status while having effectively no content — an empty category, a “no results” page, or a near-blank template. Google treats it as missing regardless of the status code, so it should either be given real content or return a proper 404.
Indirectly but genuinely. Errors waste crawl budget that would otherwise go to real pages, and repeated server errors can cause pages to be dropped from the index. Persistent errors on important URLs cost traffic; scattered ones on retired URLs usually do not.
If you’d rather not
We do this work every week. These are the services that cover it.
- SEO & Google Visibility RecoveryWhen traffic falls off a cliff, guessing is expensive. We find why Google stopped showing your pages — and fix the cause, not the symptom.
- Site Speed & Core Web VitalsA slow site loses the customer before they see your offer. We fix what makes pages crawl — heavy images, bloated scripts, blocked rendering — and prove it with numbers.
- 404 Errors & Broken LinksEvery dead link is a customer walking into a wall. We find the missing pages, restore or redirect them, and clean up the links pointing nowhere.
See exactly what’s holding your website back.
Get a free audit of your site — speed, SEO, mobile, and security — with the fixes that matter most, delivered as a PDF to your inbox.