Skip to main content

​
Discovered – currently not indexed on donor pages

“Discovered – currently not indexed” is a status in the Google Search Console page-indexing report. It means Google knows the URL but has not crawled it yet. On a donor page it means the HTML containing your backlink has never been downloaded, so the link is not part of Google’s link graph.

​
When you see this

  • The donor’s owner shows you a Search Console screenshot with the reason Discovered – currently not indexed.
  • A page-level check returns no result for the donor URL two or more weeks after placement, while the page answers with status 200 and carries no noindex directive.
  • In a bulk indexation report the URL is marked not indexed and no title is returned for it.

​
Why it happens

  • Crawl scheduling. Google postponed the crawl. The page-indexing report documentation names anticipated site overload as the typical reason; the status can persist indefinitely.
  • Weak discovery path. The URL is referenced only in a sitemap or from other uncrawled pages; no crawled document links to it.
  • Deep placement. The donor sits several clicks deep: paginated threads, profile pages, comment archives.
  • Slow host. Response times above roughly two seconds reduce the crawl rate for the whole domain.
  • Domain crawl history. On sites where most URLs were previously crawled and rejected, new URLs wait longer.

​
Fix

1

Confirm the donor is crawlable

Request the URL with a mobile Googlebot user agent. Expect status 200, no noindex in the meta robots tag or response headers, no robots.txt rule covering the path, and a canonical pointing to the same URL.
2

Confirm the status is discovery, not rejection

If you can inspect the URL in a verified property, read the coverage state field. Discovered with an empty last-crawl date means the page was never fetched. A filled crawl date with no indexation means rejection after the crawl — a different problem.
3

Create a crawl path or submit the URL

Add a link to the donor from a page Google already crawls, or submit the donor URL through an indexing service queue. Run the donor list through a bulk check first to see if your backlinks are indexed so you only submit URLs that need it.
4

Re-verify on day 7

Re-check the URL. Expected movement: into the index (title returned), or into Crawled – currently not indexed (fetched, pending selection). No movement after a submission and 30 days marks the donor for replacement.

​
Verify

A resolved donor returns a title in the indexation report and appears for a site: query with its full URL. A donor that moved to Crawled – currently not indexed was delivered; the remaining decision belongs to Google’s selection algorithm and is not guaranteed by any submission method.
The URL Inspection tool only accepts URLs of properties you have verified. For third-party donors, combine the crawlability checks above with an index check instead.