Google's "Discovered- currently not indexed" - is it a simple indexation status or is it much more? RickeyRoo's Melissa Popp joins the podcast to explain what the status of your indexation says about your site's quality.
Why looking for pages marked "Discovered - currently not indexed" should be one of the first things you check when working on a site
Why Discovered- currently not indexed can be an indication of site quality
Why too many pages marked as Discovered- currently not indexed can make it harder for future content to be indexed
Indexation Status And Site Quality: A Synopsis
It's one thing if Google can't find your content (which obviously is a problem in and of itself). It's another thing for Google to tell you that they know the content exists, they just don't care. This is what Google is essentially telling you (all things being equal and at face value) when they say your pages are "Discovered - currently not indexed."
Content quality impacting Google's choice to index what it discovered is something that John Mueller alluded to when asked about deleting pages to deal with the indexation status pervading a website: "Unless you focus on improving the actual quality, it’s easy to just spend a lot of time reducing the number of indexable pages, but not actually making the website better, and that wouldn’t improve things for search.”
It makes logical sense. Google doesn't have unlimited resources and it's gotten very picky over time with what it chooses to index. Many SEOs will tell you that it is a lot harder to get a page indexed by Google than it used to be. If Google sees your site's content lacks in quality and if that's the reason it ascribes the "Discovered- currently not indexed" status - it can negatively impact the ability of your pages to be indexed going forward.
Google has said they ascribe quality statuses to your site with things like the Helpful Content Update. Seeing your pages being discovered but not indexed and seeing a greater propensity for that status, could be a tell-tale sign that Google sees your domain's overall quality as not being up to par.
Resources
For more of the SEO Rant Podcast check out our previous episode on: Should Google be more transparent?
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