Google Knew About 161 Pages on My Website... But Indexed Only 29

Kartik singh Bisht — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 16:51:19 +0000

Building ToolMorph in Public — Part 1

A few months ago, I launched my side project called ToolMorph.

The idea was simple.

Instead of creating another AI wrapper or another note-taking app, I wanted to build a collection of genuinely useful tools that developers and founders could use every day.

So I started building.One tool became five.Five became ten.Eventually I had built:

18+ developer tools
AI Labs like Founder Roast and Resume Scorer
LifeMap, containing 120+ city pages
A blog
Landing pages
Documentation

By the time I was done, my website had 161 public pages.

Everything looked good.The site was fast.Pages had metadata.Sitemaps were generated automatically.Lighthouse scores were excellent.I honestly thought SEO would take care of itself.Then I opened Google Search Console.
This was the moment I realized something was seriously wrong.

My First Thought

I assumed Google was just being slow.Maybe it needed another week.Then another.Nothing changed.
Only a small portion of my website appeared in Google.The rest... Simply didn't exist.At least from Google's perspective.That sent me down a rabbit hole of understanding how Google actually discovers websites.

If someone asked me whether my website was technically optimized, I would've confidently answered "yes."

I had:

Clean URLs
Responsive design
Fast loading pages
XML sitemap
robots.txt
Meta titles
Meta descriptions
Open Graph tags
Canonical URLs
Structured data
Excellent Lighthouse scores

Lighthouse Report

Everything looked healthy.Yet Google still refused to crawl most of my website.So I stopped looking at SEO checklists.Instead, I started reading Search Console reports.

The Mistake I Didn't Know I Was Making

Like many developers, I treated every page as an independent page.

I built it -> Added metadata -> Published it -> Moved on.

What I didn't realize was that Google doesn't experience websites the same way users do.Google discovers pages by following links.My pages existed.But many of them weren't strongly connected together.Some required multiple clicks.Others had almost no internal links pointing toward them.Google had little reason to prioritize them.

Then I Found the Real Problem

One section of ToolMorph called LifeMap generated over one hundred city pages.Each city had its own URL.I thought this would help SEO.

Instead, Search Console filled up with pages marked:

Discovered – currently not indexed

Google wasn't rejecting these pages.It simply wasn't spending crawl resources on them.That was an important distinction.Publishing hundreds of URLs isn't the same as making them discoverable.

So I Stopped Adding More Pages

This was probably the hardest decision.As developers, building new features is fun.Improving existing architecture isn't.Instead of shipping more tools, I spent several days making my website easier for Google to understand.

Here's what I changed:

1. I Split My Sitemap

Previously, everything lived inside one sitemap.I reorganized it into dedicated sections.

Static Pages
Developer Tools
Blog
Labs
LifeMap

This made the structure much clearer.

2. I Added Breadcrumbs Everywhere

Many of my pages felt isolated.Breadcrumbs solved two problems.

Users could navigate more easily.
Search engines could better understand page hierarchy.

Sometimes improvements help both humans and crawlers.

3. I Improved Internal Linking

This turned out to be much more important than I expected.Instead of letting every page stand alone, I started connecting related content.

Developer tools linked to similar tools.
Blog posts linked to tools.
Labs linked to related Labs.
LifeMap cities linked back to their hub.

The homepage highlighted important sections instead of hiding them.Every new link gave Google another path through the site.

What Happened Next?

I don't have an exciting ending yet.And I think that's worth saying honestly.I recently deployed these changes.
Google has already accepted my new sitemap containing all 161 URLs, and I'm now waiting to see how indexing changes over the coming weeks.

SEO isn't instant.

It's more like planting seeds than flipping a switch.

What I Learned

After spending days investigating this issue, here are the biggest lessons I'll carry into every future project.

1. High Lighthouse scores don't mean your pages will be indexed.
Performance is important.Indexing is a completely different problem.

2. A sitemap tells Google your pages exist.
It doesn't convince Google they're worth crawling.

3. Internal links matter much more than I expected.
Every important page should have multiple paths leading to it.

4. Building hundreds of pages is easy.
Helping Google understand their relationships is much harder.

5. Stop obsessing over meta tags.
Start thinking about information architecture.

That's what ultimately changed my perspective.

What's Next?

ToolMorph is still a work in progress.

I'm continuing to improve both the product and its SEO, and I'll keep documenting everything I learn—both the wins and the mistakes.If you're curious about the project behind this article, you can explore ToolMorph:

👉 https://toolmorph.in

Along the way, I've also built a growing collection of free developer tools that I use while building the product:

👉 https://toolmorph.in/tools

This is only the first post in my Building ToolMorph in Public series, where I'll share real numbers, real mistakes, and the lessons I learn while growing the project.

If you've ever dealt with "Discovered – currently not indexed" in Search Console, I'd love to hear what worked for you. Share your experience in the comments!

DEV Community: Kartik singh Bisht