Discovered - currently not indexed

It’s been two days since I implemented my optimized sitemap strategy for Colorify.Rocks, prioritizing Design-like colors out of the 16 million possible pages. While Google has noticed the sitemap, most pages are still showing the status: "Discovered – currently not indexed."

Understanding "Discovered – Currently Not Indexed"

According to Google, this status means that the page was found but not yet crawled. Google explains this as follows:

The page was found by Google, but not crawled yet. Typically, Google wanted to crawl the URL but this was expected to overload the site; therefore Google rescheduled the crawl. This is why the last crawl date is empty on the report.

My Take on Google's Explanation

While Google's statement suggests that the delay is about protecting your server from overload, I believe that’s not the full story. Yes, Google is concerned about your site’s capacity, but there’s a bigger picture at play: Google’s own crawl budget.

Crawling billions of websites is an expensive process. Even though crawling my pages wouldn’t have a significant impact on Google’s resources, they have to carefully allocate their crawl budget to prioritize content that they believe adds the most value to users.

Here’s my perspective:

1. Short-Term Delay: If this status appears for a few days, it’s usually fine and part of the normal crawling process.
2. Long-Term Issue: If the status persists, it may indicate that Google doesn’t currently view the page as valuable or worth prioritizing. That’s when action is needed.

How to Show Google That Your Page Should Be Crawled

If you’re in this situation and want to encourage Google to prioritize crawling certain pages, here are some steps to take:

Eliminate Orphan Pages: Ensure the page isn’t isolated. Add internal links to it from other pages on your site.

If it’s a high-priority page, link to it from your most authoritative pages—those already getting strong attention from Google.

Submit the Page to Google: Use the URL Inspection Tool in Google Search Console to request indexing for individual pages.

This adds the page to Google’s priority crawl queue, giving it a higher chance of being crawled sooner.

Note: You can only submit 10–15 pages per day, so focus on your most important ones.

Enhance Internal Link Strategy: Use descriptive anchor text for links pointing to the page. This helps Google understand its relevance and topic.

Why Focus on Internal Links First?

There are many off-page SEO techniques that can help drive attention to your pages. However, from a purely technical SEO perspective, internal linking and direct submission are two of the fastest, most actionable ways to signal a page's importance to Google.

If you’re seeing “Discovered – currently not indexed,” don’t panic. Use this as an opportunity to refine your internal linking strategy, request indexing for critical pages, and monitor how Google’s crawling evolves.

Remember, it’s a process that takes time. By combining these techniques with consistent monitoring in Google Search Console, you can help Google recognize the value of your content and encourage faster indexing. I’ll continue sharing updates as I gather more insights!