Again in Could Google’s Gary Illyes sat for an interview on the SERP Conf 2024 convention in Bulgaria and answered a query concerning the causes of crawled however not listed, providing a number of causes which are useful for debugging and fixing this error.
Though the interview occurred in Could, the video of the interview went underreported and never many individuals have really watched it. I solely heard of it as a result of the all the time superior Olesia Korobka (@Giridja) not too long ago drew consideration to the interview in a Fb publish.
So despite the fact that the interview occurred in Could, the data continues to be well timed and helpful.
Motive For Crawled – At the moment Not Listed
Crawled At the moment Not Listed is a reference to an error report within the Google Search Console Web page Indexing report which alerts {that a} web page was crawled by Google however was not listed.
Throughout a reside interview somebody submitted a query, asking:
“Can crawled however not listed be a results of a web page being too much like different stuff already listed?
So is Google suggesting there may be sufficient different stuff already and your stuff isn’t distinctive sufficient?”
Google’s search console documentation doesn’t present a solution as to why Google might crawl a web page and never index it, so it’s a reputable query.
Gary Illyes answered that sure, one of many causes might be that there’s already different content material that’s related. However he additionally goes on to say that there are different causes, too.
He answered:
“Yeah, that that might be one factor that it may well imply. Crawled however not listed is, ideally we might break up that class into extra granular chunks, however it’s tremendous onerous due to how the information internally exists.
It may be a bunch of issues, dupe elimination is a type of issues, the place we crawl the web page after which we resolve to not index it as a result of there’s already a model of that or an especially related model of that content material out there in our index and it has higher indicators.
However yeah, however it it may be a number of issues.”
Common High quality Of Website Can Influence Indexing
Gary then referred to as consideration to a different purpose why Google may crawl however select to not index a website, saying that it might be a website high quality subject.
Illyes then continued his reply:
“And the overall high quality of the of the location, that may matter numerous what number of of those crawled however not listed you see in search console. If the variety of these URLs could be very excessive that might trace at common high quality points.
And I’ve seen that rather a lot since February, the place immediately we simply determined that we’re indexing an enormous quantity of URLs on a website simply because …our notion of the location has modified.”
Different Causes For Crawled Not Listed
Gary subsequent supplied different causes for why URLs is perhaps crawled however not listed, saying that it might be that Google’s notion of the location might have modified however that it might be a technical subject.
Gary defined:
“…And one risk is that while you see that quantity rising, that the notion of… Google’s notion of the location has modified, that might be one factor.
However then there is also that there was an error, for instance on the location after which it served the identical precise web page to each single URL on the location. That is also one of many causes that you simply see that quantity climbing.
So yeah, there might be many issues.”
Takeaways
Gary supplied solutions that ought to assist debug why an online web page is perhaps crawled however not listed by Google.
- Content material is much like content material already ranked within the search engine outcomes pages (SERPs)
- Very same content material exists on one other website that has higher indicators
- Common website high quality points
- Technical points
Though Illyes didn’t elaborate on what he meant about one other website with higher indicators, I’m pretty sure that he’s describing the situation when a website syndicates its content material to a different website and Google chooses to rank the opposite website for the content material and never the unique writer.
Watch Gary reply this query on the 9 minute mark of the recorded interview:
Featured Picture by Shutterstock/Roman Samborskyi
