When a new site's homepage is indexed but its interior pages are not, the cause is almost always one of seven things: Google has discovered the URLs but has not scheduled the crawl yet, the sitemap was never actually fetched, a sitewide canonical tag points every page at the homepage, the sitemap lists URLs that are noindexed or non-canonical, the sitemap is frozen at launch and never lists new pages, interior pages have weak or uncrawlable internal links, or the site has no external links telling Google it is worth crawling. You confirm which one with URL Inspection, the Sitemaps report and the Page indexing report in Search Console, fix the technical layer first, then build discovery signals, because on a clean new site the bottleneck is usually crawl demand, not a bug.
Google indexes a page in three stages. It discovers the URL (from a link, a sitemap or a request), crawls it when it decides the URL is worth fetching, then processes it, picks a canonical and stores it in the index. Search Console reports each stage separately: the Sitemaps report shows whether Google read your sitemap, the Page indexing report (Indexing, then Pages) groups every known URL by status, and URL Inspection shows one URL's discovery source, last crawl, and the canonical Google selected.
We ran into this across several new sites we launched. Homepages indexed quickly, interior pages sat untouched for weeks, and the technical setup checked out clean. We also found three bugs of our own along the way; they are in the list below because they are common.
What is the difference between Discovered and Crawled, currently not indexed?
Discovered, currently not indexed means Google knows the URL but has not crawled it yet; Crawled, currently not indexed means Google fetched the page and chose not to index it. Google's Page indexing documentation says Discovered usually means Google wanted to crawl the URL but expected it to overload the site, so it rescheduled the crawl. On a small new site that is rarely a server capacity problem. In our accounts it behaved like a crawl demand problem: Google had not yet decided the pages were worth fetching. Crawled, currently not indexed is a judgement on the page itself, and Google says there is no need to resubmit those URLs for crawling.
Plain definitions. Crawl demand: how much Google wants to crawl a site, which Google says is influenced by popularity, freshness and quality. Canonical: the one URL Google picks to represent a set of duplicates. Orphan page: a page nothing on the site links to.
The seven causes we find most often.
- Low crawl demand on a new domain: Google has the URLs in its queue but nothing tells it the site is popular or trusted, so interior pages wait while the homepage gets crawled
- Sitemap never fetched: the Sitemaps report shows Couldn't fetch or no Last read date, so the URLs in it were never queued from that source
- Sitewide canonical to the homepage: a canonical tag hardcoded in the shared layout makes every page declare the homepage as its canonical, so Google treats interior pages as duplicates
- Noindex or non-canonical URLs in the sitemap: the sitemap lists pages that carry noindex, redirect, or canonicalize elsewhere, which sends Google contradictory signals
- Frozen sitemap: the sitemap was generated once at build or launch and never updates, so pages published later are only discoverable through links
- Weak internal links: interior pages are reachable only through JavaScript click handlers, search boxes, or not at all, so Google has no crawl path to them
- No external links: nothing outside the site points to it, which leaves Google with little reason to raise crawl demand
How do I check why a specific page is not indexed?
Inspect the URL in Search Console first; it shows whether Google knows the URL, how it found it, when it last crawled it, and which canonical it chose. Then check the Sitemaps report and the Page indexing report. In this order.
URL Inspection. Paste the interior URL into the inspection bar at the top of Search Console. Under Page indexing, read Discovery (Sitemaps and Referring page), Last crawl, User-declared canonical and Google-selected canonical. No sitemap and no referring page means Google found it some other way or not at all. A user-declared canonical that shows your homepage is the layout bug.
Sitemaps report. Open Indexing, then Sitemaps. Each submitted sitemap shows a status (Success, Has errors, or Couldn't fetch), the Last read date, and discovered page count. Google defines Last read as the last time it fetched the sitemap, present only if the fetch worked.
Page indexing report. Open Indexing, then Pages, and read the reasons under Why pages aren't indexed. A large Discovered bucket is a demand problem. Pages you want ranked sitting under Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user point at a canonical bug. URL marked noindex on wanted pages points at a template setting. For new properties, see why a Search Console property can show no data before you read anything into empty charts.
Diagnose top to bottom.
This is the order we run. Each step stops at one layer, so you fix the first real failure before you spend effort on discovery.
| Symptom | Likely cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Homepage indexed, interior pages Discovered, currently not indexed for weeks | Low crawl demand on a new domain | Strengthen internal links from the homepage, earn relevant external links, keep the sitemap current |
| Sitemap shows Couldn't fetch or no Last read date | Fetch failed, or Google has not processed the submission yet | Confirm 200, XML type, not blocked by robots.txt, then resubmit |
| Google-selected canonical is the homepage on every interior page | Canonical hardcoded in the shared layout | Generate a self-referencing absolute canonical per page |
| Sitemap URLs reported as URL marked noindex | Noindex pages listed in the sitemap | Remove noindexed and redirected URLs from the sitemap generator |
| Inspection shows no referring page | Orphan page or uncrawlable links | Add plain anchor links with href from indexed pages |
| Crawled, currently not indexed | Google crawled and declined the page | Improve or consolidate the page; resubmitting will not help |
| Duplicate without user-selected canonical on slash and non-slash URLs | Mixed trailing slash forms in links and sitemap | Pick one form, redirect the other, use it everywhere |
| Indexing API calls return 429 | Project quota exhausted, possibly by another job | Check usage per Cloud project and stop pinging page types the API does not support |
Can I use the Google Indexing API to index normal pages?
No: Google's documentation says the Indexing API can only be used for pages with JobPosting or BroadcastEvent embedded in a VideoObject. As of October 2026 that is still the wording on Google's Indexing API quickstart, which also says submissions undergo spam detection and that abusing quotas may get access revoked. We cover the details in Google Indexing API limits and how to use it.
We learned this the hard way. Our scheduled Indexing API pings started failing with HTTP 429. Google's quota page says the default is 200 publish requests per day, applied per Google Cloud project, resetting at midnight Pacific Time. A different job sharing the same Cloud project was consuming that quota first. The pings that did go out were also sending non-canonical trailing slash URLs. We stopped the pings, since the pages were not a supported type anyway.
How long does it take Google to index a new site's pages?
Google says crawling can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, and it does not guarantee every page will be indexed. For a single URL submitted through URL Inspection, Google's help page says indexing typically takes a day or so but can take much longer. Google also says not every URL in a sitemap may be crawled.
What is normal and what is a red flag?
- Normal: the homepage indexes before interior pages. Google usually reaches it first through links and direct submission
- Normal: not every sitemap URL gets indexed. Google says sitemap URLs are queued for crawling, not promised indexing
- Normal: a sitemap under Google's limits of 50,000 URLs or 50MB uncompressed per file; larger sites split into several files with a sitemap index
- Red flag: a user-declared canonical that is the same URL on every page
- Red flag: sitemap URLs reported as noindexed, redirected or 404
- Red flag: no Last read date on the sitemap after you have confirmed the file returns 200 and resubmitted it
Two things that do not help: crawl budget tuning (Google's guide targets sites with over 1 million unique pages, or over 10,000 that change very rapidly) and sitemap priority and changefreq tags, which Google ignores. If you are moving an existing site rather than launching a new one, use our website migration checklist instead. If your pages are indexed and still get no traffic, that is a ranking question, covered in pages indexed but no Google impressions.
Why is only my homepage indexed on Google?
Usually Google has discovered the interior URLs but not crawled them, or cannot find them. Inspect one interior page and read the referring page, sitemap and Google-selected canonical. If the canonical is your homepage, fix the layout. If there is no referring page, add internal links. If both look fine, build external links and wait.
How do I fix Discovered, currently not indexed?
Put the pages in a working sitemap, link them from indexed pages with normal anchors, give each a self canonical, then earn relevant external links. Request indexing only for a few key URLs.
Why does my sitemap say Couldn't fetch in Search Console?
Google could not retrieve the file. Check that the sitemap URL returns HTTP 200 without a redirect, serves XML, is not blocked in robots.txt, and is inside the property you submitted it to. Then resubmit.
Does requesting indexing in Search Console work?
It asks Google to crawl one URL. It does not guarantee indexing, there is a daily limit, and repeat requests do not make it faster.
Should I use the Indexing API or IndexNow to get pages indexed faster?
Not for Google on ordinary pages. Google limits the Indexing API to JobPosting and BroadcastEvent pages, and Google does not participate in IndexNow. IndexNow is still useful for Bing and other participating engines.