It is a common situation: your website is on Google, your homepage appears when you search your business name, but many of your service pages, blog posts or products simply never show up. Search Console confirms it: a healthy number of pages indexed, and a larger number listed as “not indexed”. You are not penalised, and your site is not broken. Google has simply decided that some pages are not worth crawling or keeping right now. The good news is that there is almost always a clear reason, and it can be fixed.
This article is part of our complete guide: Why Is My Website Not on Google? The Complete Indexing Guide.
First, find out exactly which pages are missing
Do not guess. Open Search Console and go to Indexing › Sitemaps, click your sitemap and choose See page indexing. This filters the report to the URLs you have said are important. You will see two numbers: indexed and not indexed. Below them, the reasons are listed with the number of affected pages.
Export the not-indexed URLs and sort them into groups: services, locations, blog posts, products, categories, other. Patterns appear quickly. For example, all location pages might be in “Crawled – currently not indexed”, or all products might be “Discovered – currently not indexed”.
The nine most common causes
1. Similar or duplicate pages
If ten location pages share 90% of their text, Google may index one or two and ignore the rest. The same happens with products that differ only by colour or size. Google’s goal is to avoid showing searchers the same thing twice. Read duplicate without user-selected canonical.
2. Thin pages
Pages with a heading, a stock image and two sentences rarely make the cut. That includes empty category pages, tag pages and placeholder pages. See our guide to fixing thin content.
3. Weak internal linking
Pages that are not linked from your menu, homepage or related content look unimportant. Orphan pages, reachable only through the sitemap, are the most likely to be skipped.
4. Crawl waste
Thousands of filter URLs, tag archives and attachment pages compete with your real pages for Google’s attention. Cleaning them up often unlocks indexing for the pages that matter. This is covered in Discovered – currently not indexed.
5. Technical blockers on specific templates
A noindex on one post type, a robots.txt rule matching one folder, or a canonical error in one template can remove an entire section while the rest of the site is fine. Check one URL from each missing group with URL Inspection.
6. Content that does not match search demand
Pages about topics nobody searches for, or that target a keyword your homepage already covers better, may be crawled but not indexed. Google keeps pages that serve a clear purpose.
7. Keyword cannibalisation
Several pages trying to rank for the same keyword split signals. Google may index one and drop the others. See keyword cannibalisation.
8. Slow or unreliable hosting
If your server is slow or returns errors, Google crawls fewer pages per visit. Check Settings › Crawl stats for response times and host status.
9. A young site with little authority
New domains have a small crawl allowance. Google indexes the most important-looking pages first and works through the rest gradually.
A step-by-step plan to fix it
Step 1: Remove technical blockers
Inspect a sample URL from every missing group. If any show “Indexing allowed: No”, “Crawl allowed: No” or a different Google-selected canonical, fix those first. Nothing else will work until they are gone.
Step 2: Clean the sitemap
The sitemap should list only pages you want indexed: no redirects, no noindexed pages, no thin archives. See how to submit and clean a sitemap.
Step 3: Merge, improve or remove weak pages
For each group of similar pages, decide: merge them into one stronger page, rewrite each to be genuinely unique, or remove those with no value. Ten mediocre location pages often perform worse than three excellent ones.
Step 4: Build internal links
Link every important page from at least two or three relevant pages using descriptive anchor text. Add “related services” and “related articles” sections. Make sure your main services are in the navigation. Our guide to internal linking shows how.
Step 5: Improve speed and stability
Turn on caching, compress images, remove unnecessary plugins and upgrade hosting if the server struggles.
Step 6: Request indexing for priority pages
Use URL Inspection on your ten most important pages, run the live test, then request indexing. See how to use URL Inspection.
Step 7: Earn signals from outside your site
Mentions and links from suppliers, partners, local directories and industry sites increase how much Google wants to crawl you. Google Business Profile posts and social shares help with discovery.
Step 8: Monitor monthly
Track the indexed count for your sitemap each month. A rising number means the fixes are working.
What percentage of pages should be indexed?
There is no perfect number. For a small business site where every page in the sitemap is genuinely useful, aim for 90% or more of sitemap URLs indexed. For large ecommerce or content sites, 70–80% can be normal. The important thing is that your money pages, the ones that bring enquiries and sales, are all indexed.
Platform-specific notes
WordPress: check that custom post types such as portfolio items or case studies are set to index and included in the sitemap. Wix: dynamic pages and blog category pages are often thin; check them in the Wix SEO checklist. Squarespace: look for empty collection pages. Shopify: collections with few products and product variants can be skipped.
An example from our work
On service business sites such as K9 Daycare and CopierStaples, the pages that were missing from Google were not the problem in themselves. They lacked links from the rest of the site and overlapped with other pages. Clarifying the structure, so each page had a distinct job and a clear place in the navigation, is what moved them into the index.
Related guides and services
- Page indexing report explained: every status in Search Console in plain English.
- Discovered – currently not indexed: why Google postpones crawling and how to speed it up.
- Crawled – currently not indexed: what to do when Google reads a page but refuses to index it.
- Duplicate without user-selected canonical: how to set canonicals so Google indexes the right URL.
- Google indexing fix service: we diagnose and fix pages Google will not index.
Get expert help
If you would rather spend your time running your business, MIVAQ can handle this for you. We audit the site, fix the root causes, document every change and show you the before-and-after in Search Console, so you know exactly what improved and why. Start with our Google indexing fix service, browse real client results in our case studies, or contact us for a free, no-pressure review of your website.
Frequently asked questions
Is it normal for Google not to index every page?
Yes. Google is selective. What matters is that your important pages are indexed.
Will more content get more pages indexed?
Not by itself. Better, more distinct content and stronger internal linking help more than volume.
Should I delete pages Google won’t index?
Only if they have no value to visitors. Otherwise improve, merge or link to them.
How long after fixing will pages be indexed?
Usually two to six weeks, faster for important pages after you request indexing.
