Google Search Console can sometimes display messages that are confusing, especially when you're working to optimize your website for search engines. This guide is designed to help you understand and resolve common Google Search Console notifications, ensuring your PhotoBiz website performs well in search results.
Note: PhotoBiz is not affiliated with Google. While our Passionate Support Team can help you install your Google Search Console validation code, for specific questions about Google Search Console functionality, it’s best to refer to Google Search Console Help.
Key Goals of Google Search Console
The primary goal is to ensure Google is indexing the main version (canonical) of each important page on your website. Any duplicate or alternative pages should not be indexed. Pages marked as duplicates mean Google has found the main page and ignored the other versions.
Learn More: How Canonical Tags Work With PhotoBiz Website Builder
View Data About Indexed Pages
In this section of Google Search Console, you can see which of your website's pages have been successfully indexed by Google. Indexed pages are eligible to appear in search results, so having all critical pages indexed is essential for visibility.
Regularly check the status of your pages to ensure important ones are indexed. If a page is missing, it may not be indexed, which can hurt your search rankings.
Alternate Page with Proper Canonical Tag
When Google sees two pages with the same content, one is indexed, and the other is marked as an alternate. Google uses the canonical tag to decide which page to index. This is common for duplicate content scenarios, such as default URLs or subpages. Learn more about this in our guide:
Duplicate Without User-Selected Canonical
This means a page is a duplicate, but no canonical tag was set by the user. Google picked another page as the canonical one. This isn't an error, but if you prefer another page as the main version, make sure to select it manually. Otherwise, ensure that the content on both pages is different enough to prevent Google from marking one as a duplicate.
Duplicate, Google Chose Different Canonical Than User
In this case, you’ve selected a page to be the main one, but Google has chosen another URL as the canonical version. To fix this, compare the URLs using the “Inspect this URL” feature in Search Console to see why Google picked a different one.
Steps to Check Canonical URLs:
- Go to Page Indexing > Google-Selected Canonical to see the version Google chose.
- Go to Page Indexing > User-Declared Canonical to check the one you set.
- Inspect both versions in your browser to see why Google might have made this decision.
- If the Google-selected canonical is the tested page, then Google thinks that the tested page isn't similar to any other pages.
- If the user-declared canonical is not similar to the current page, then Google won't ever choose that URL as canonical. A duplicate page must be similar to the canonical. (That's what duplicate means.)
Not Found (404)
A “404 Not Found” error occurs when Google tries to index a page that doesn’t exist. This usually happens when a URL has changed or a page has been deleted. To fix this, set up a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one.
How to Fix: Follow our step-by-step guide on Setting Up 301 Redirects to resolve this issue.
Soft 404
Similar to the 404 error, but in this case, the page isn’t missing; instead, Google detects that the page lacks enough content to be indexed. You can fix this by improving the page's content or using our 301 redirect tool.
https://support.photobiz.com/blog-post/how-to-fix-not-found-404-pages-in-google-search-console
Page with Redirect
This refers to a URL redirecting to another URL. As mentioned before, Google will only index a single URL per page, and since two URLs are pointing to the same page, Google will index the final URL destination and mark the other as a redirected URL. This isn't exactly an error, it's more of a status explaining the scenario so as long as the redirect is intentional, there is nothing to worry about.
Redirect Error
This refers to the situation above (page with redirect) with Google seeing this URL as a redirected URL, however they discover an error reaching the final URL destination. To fix this, you can manually inspect the URL to discover any specific errors with the URL.
Server Error (5xx)
Server error (5xx) can be caused by a number of reasons, but ultimately it is Google not being able to index a page because it is unavailable for Google's website crawler. Below is what each error message refers to.
- 500 – Internal Server Error
- 501 – Not Implemented
- 502 – Bad Gateway
- 503 – Service Unavailable
- 504 – Gateway Timeout
- 505 – HTTP Version Not Supported
- 506 – Variant Also Negotiates
- 507 – Insufficient Storage
- 508 – Loop Detected
- 509 – Bandwidth Limit Exceeded
- 510 – Not Extended (RFC 2774)
- 511 – Network Authentication Required
Crawled - Currently Not Indexed
Google's webpage crawler looked over the page, but it was not indexed. It is possible it may or may not be indexed in the future. You can manually inspect the URL using the Search Console URL Inspection Tool to see if there are any specific reasons why the URL isn't indexed, and otherwise request indexing.
Discovered - Currently Not Indexed
The webpage has been found online by Google, but it hasn't been crawled yet. It is possible Google intended to crawl it but this was expected to overload the site and rescheduled indexing the page. You can manually inspect the URL using the Search Console URL Inspection Tool to see if there are any specific reasons why the URL isn't indexed, and otherwise request indexing.
