If you’ve ever opened your inbox to find an email from Google Search Console with a subject line like “New Coverage Issue Detected” or “Mobile Usability Issues Found,” and immediately forwarded it to your web designer or SEO person in a panic…this post is for you.
I get these forwarded to me from clients ALL the time.
And 9 times out of 10, my response is some version of “oh that one’s totally fine to ignore” and then explain why.
My biggest issue with these are that the emails are written in a way that makes everything feel urgent and technical and scary, even when the actual issue is either expected, harmless, or something your website platform handles automatically.
That’s actually the whole problem LOL
Google Search Console uses terminology that sounds WAY more alarming than it usually is.
Words like “crawl anomaly” and “noindex tag” and “coverage issue” feel urgent, even when the underlying situation is completely minor or not even a real problem at all.
So if you’re lookin’ for a simple breakdown of what these Google Search Console errors actually mean and what (if anything) you need to do about them, you’re in the right place.
I’m gonna walk you through the most common ones, categorized the same way GSC organizes them, so you can cross-reference as you go.
One important thing to keep in mind before we get into it: NOT every error in Google Search Console needs to be fixed.
- Some of them are informational.
- Some are expected.
- And some only matter if they’re affecting pages you actually care about showing up in search.
A perfect, error-free dashboard isn’t the goal
👉 What you actually want is a healthy site that Google can crawl, understand, and rank.
And those are 2 VERY different things, my friend. BUT, let’s get into it…
How Google Finds & Indexes Your Pages
Before you can understand the errors, it’ll be helpful to understand the basic process Google goes through to get your pages into search results.
Here’s what’s happening in the 3 phases:
- Discovering is when Google first finds out a page exists, usually by following links from other pages or reading your XML sitemap.
- Crawling is when Google’s bot actually visits the page and gathers information from it.
- Indexing is when Google processes that information and decides whether the page is worth including in search results.
Your pages can only show up in Google if they make it all the way through that 3rd phase.
Google Search Console errors are basically Google’s way of telling you where something went sideways in that process, or flagging things it noticed along the way.
Okay, now with that context handled, the errors are gonna make a lot more sense.
Let’s get into the most common Google Search Console errors and what to do about them…
Mobile Usability Issues
“Mobile-first indexing enabled”
Okay, this one is NOT an error. If you get this message, it’s actually great news. It means Google has determined that your site is well-designed for mobile and will use the mobile version of your site when it crawls and ranks you.
Most website platforms & builders like Squarespace, Showit, and WordPress with a modern theme have responsive design built in, meaning your site automatically adjusts to look good on any screen size. If you’re on one of those platforms, you can pretty much expect this message and celebrate accordingly.
Nothing to fix here. Move along lol.
“Mobile Usability Issues”
This one is a real flag.
🚩 It means Google found specific elements on your pages that aren’t working well on mobile. The most common culprits are:
- Text too small to read (Google tends to flag anything below 16px on mobile as a usability issue)
- Clickable elements too close together (aim for at least 8px of space between buttons or links)
- Content wider than the screen
When you get this message, click through to GSC and look at which pages are affected and which specific issue type is listed.
From there, go into your website builder and fix the problem on those pages. Once you’ve made the changes, go back to GSC and hit “Validate Fix” so Google knows to take another look.
These issues are worth fixing bc mobile usability is a real ranking factor. Google prioritizes the mobile experience. If your mobile site is frustrating to use, that can affect a lot.
Coverage and Indexing Issues
This is the category that trips people up the most, bc there are a LOT of different error types and they don’t all require action…
“Submitted URL not found (404)”
This is the most common coverage error you’ll see, and it usually happens for 1 of 2 reasons:
- You deleted a page or changed its URL, but Google still has the old URL in its records (often from your sitemap or from another site linking to it.)
- Or you migrated from one platform to another (like from an old WordPress site or Squarespace 7.0 to a new one) and the old URLs didn’t carry over.
The fix is to set up a redirect. A 301 redirect tells Google permanently that the old URL now lives at a new address. A 302 is for temporary redirects. You’ll almost always use 301.
How you set these up depends on your platform:
👉 On Squarespace, go to Settings, then Developer Tools, then URL Mappings. The format looks like this: /old-url -> /new-url 301 — (Here’s a helpful YouTube tutorial for this!)
👉 On WordPress, plugins like Redirection or the premium version of Yoast SEO can handle this for you (Here’s a helpful YouTube tutorial for this!)
👉 On Shopify, when you delete a page, usually a 301 redirect automatically happens, but if you need to set one up manually, you can follow this helpful tutorial.
👉 On Showit, redirects for your pages can be managed in your site settings (check out this help article here.) If you need to setup 301 redirects for your blog, you’ll do that on WordPress (see the options above for WP).
After you set up a redirect, GSC might still flag it briefly as an “error.” That’s normal. Google just takes a little time to process the change. Once you’ve set the redirect, submit the URL for re-indexing in GSC and give it a week or two.
Also worth knowing: redirects work best for website pages. Static assets like images stored in a CDN (common on Squarespace) typically can’t be redirected, so if those are showing up as 404s, you may just have to live with that one.
Important if you recently relaunched or redesigned your site:
Google doesn’t forget lol
There’s no way to “manually wipe old URLs from Google’s memory”. If your site had a previous version with completely different URLs, those old pages are still floating around in Google’s records, and GSC will flag them as 404s even if they never existed on your new site.
This is suuuuuuuper common after a rebrand, a platform migration, or a full redesign.
You’ll open GSC and see a bunch of errors for URLs that look old or not relevant anymore, and it can feel overwhelming. But a lot of the time, those errors will naturally fall away on their own as Google recrawls your site and figures out that those old pages are just gone.
You can set up redirects for the most important ones (like old blog posts or service pages that people might still be linking to), but for random old URLs that never had much value, it’s okay to let them fade out on their own timeline.
“Soft 404”
A soft 404 is a lil sneaky. It happens when a page technically exists and returns a 200 status code (which means “this page is working fine”), but the content on the page is so thin or so empty that Google thinks it might as well be a 404.
This can also happen if your page contains phrases like “no longer available,” “item not found,” or “not in stock,” because Google reads those and thinks the page is a dead end.
If you see soft 404s, check whether the affected pages have real, useful content on them. If they’re empty or near-empty, either beef them up or remove and redirect them. If they’re fine but contain some of those trigger phrases in your product descriptions or policies, try rewriting that language.
“Submitted URL marked ‘noindex'”
This one sounds alarming but usually isn’t a big deal. A noindex tag is an instruction you (or your platform) put on a page to tell Google not to include it in search results.
This is actually intentional in a lot of cases. On Squarespace, for example, cart and checkout pages are automatically noindexed and you can’t change that. Same goes for any pages you’ve manually hidden from search in your site settings.
The error becomes a real problem only if a page you WANT indexed has accidentally gotten a noindex tag on it. That’s when to take action.
👉 To fix it on Squarespace: go to Pages, hover over the page, click the gear icon, go to the SEO tab, and make sure “Hide page from search results” is toggled off.
👉 On WordPress: check your page settings and make sure the “noindex” checkbox (in Yoast or RankMath) isn’t turned on. Sometimes pages get noindexed accidentally during a site build and nobody notices for months.
👉 On Showit: check both the Showit page settings and the WordPress SEO settings if you’re using the blog.
Once you’ve confirmed the page is set to index, go back to GSC, paste the URL in the inspection bar at the top, and hit “Request Indexing.”
It can sometimes take a couple of tries and a week or so before GSC shows a green “Page is on Google” status.
“Crawled – Currently Not Indexed”
This one is probably the most frustrating error you’ll encounter in Google Search Console, and I say that as someone who has spent a lot of time staring at it lol.
It means Google found your page and visited it, but the bots decided not to include it in the index. The annoying part is that Google won’t tell you exactly why.
There are a few possibilities:
- The page was very recently crawled and indexing just hasn’t happened yet. Give it a couple of weeks before worrying.
- The page has thin content or duplicate content and Google doesn’t think it’s worth indexing. This is the more serious case.
- The page has confusing navigation or weak internal linking, making it hard for Google to understand how it fits into your site.
It’s just a feed or RSS URL that Google correctly identified as not needing to be indexed.
If it’s a page you care about, here’s what to look at:
- Does the page have original, genuinely helpful content?
- Is it linked from other pages on your site?
- Is your navigation clear and easy to follow? If the answer to any of those is no, that’s your starting point.
Improving internal links, cleaning up thin content, and making your site easier to navigate can all help. After you’ve made improvements, request indexing in GSC and give it time.
Important distinction: “Crawled – Currently Not Indexed” is different from “Discovered – Currently Not Indexed.” Discovered just means Google knows the page exists but hasn’t gotten around to visiting it yet. That one usually resolves on its own and isn’t worth stressing about, unless it’s a page you care a lot about.
If that’s the case, manually resubmit this page to in the search bar by pasting the URL and hitting enter on your keyboard (here’s a YouTube tutorial that walks you through this process!)
“Indexed, though blocked by robots.txt”
Okay this one’s a little weird.
Your robots.txt file is basically a set of rules you give to search engine bots telling them which pages they’re allowed to visit. This error means Google found and indexed a page even though your robots.txt told it not to crawl there.
Here’s the thing: robots.txt is a suggestion, not a lock.
If Google finds strong enough signals pointing to a page (like a lot of links), it may index it anyway. The only way to truly prevent a page from being indexed is to add a noindex tag to the page itself. Robots.txt alone won’t always cut it.
If you see this error, decide whether you actually want those pages indexed or not. If not, add a noindex tag. If they’re fine to be indexed, no action needed.
“Blocked by robots.txt”
This is the opposite situation from the last one. Google tried to crawl a page and your robots.txt said “nope, not allowed.” The page wasn’t indexed as a result.
On platforms like Squarespace or Shopify, the robots.txt file is managed by the platform itself and you can’t edit it.
Squarespace & Shopify block certain internal and system pages on purpose, like /config/ and /api/ pages. This is totally normal and nothing to worry about.
The only time to pay attention to this error is if a page you genuinely want indexed is showing up here. On a self-hosted WordPress site you have full control over the robots.txt, so you’d just remove the blocking rule for that URL.
On Squarespace or Showit, if a page you need indexed is getting blocked, it’s worth digging into why.
“Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user”
Think of a canonical as your way of telling Google, “this is the main version of this page.” This warning means you made that choice BUT Google didn’t agree and picked a different version instead.
This often happens when your site has multiple similar URLs, like a product page with different sizes or filters creating extra versions.
For example, a product page for a keychain that has different colors would be:
- domainname.com/product/the-cutest-keychain-ever (this is the MAIN product URL)
- domainname.com/product/the-cutest-keychain-ever?color=blue (this is the product URL with the BLUE option selected)
Although these are technically coming from the SAME product page, they’re *technically* different URLs.
Annnnnnd Google sees ALL these versions and chooses the one it thinks is strongest.
Your next step is to check Google Search Console’s URL Inspection tool to see which version it picked.
If Google chose a version that looks better or more complete, you can go with it. If not, it usually means your site pages have some mixed signals (like conflicting canonical tags or near-duplicate content), and you’ll want to clean up duplicate pages or make sure everything clearly points to one main URL.
“Alternate page with proper canonical tag”
This one is usually fine. It means a page has been correctly canonicalized to another URL, and Google is just reporting that it chose to index the canonical version instead of this one.
The exception is if you’re seeing a really large increase in pages listed here while your actual site hasn’t grown much. That can signal a crawl budget issue or messy internal link structure. But for most small business websites, this is a non-issue.
Redirect Errors
“Redirect error”
This happens when Google follows a redirect and runs into a problem. Common causes include redirect loops (page A redirects to page B which redirects back to page A), redirect chains that are too long (Google will typically follow up to 5 redirects before giving up), or a redirect that points to a page that’s itself a 404.
If you’ve ever changed a URL multiple times over the years, you might have a redirect chain where the old URL points to a slightly-less-old URL which points to the current URL.
Cleaning those up so old URLs point directly to the current live URL is worth doing.
How you would clean these up, depends on how your website platform handles 301 redirects. Scroll up to that section for those suggestions!
Server Errors
“Server error (5xx)”
This error means Google tried to visit a page and your server returned an error, meaning the server had a problem fulfilling the request. The most common cause is a server that was temporarily overloaded or down at the exact moment Google came to crawl.
If you check the affected page and it loads fine right now, this was likely a temporary blip and it’ll resolve itself the next time Google crawls your site. No action needed.
If the page is actually down or consistently returning errors, that’s a hosting problem worth escalating to your web host or platform support team.
A Note on Aiming for “Perfect” in Google Search Console
I want to be reallllllllllly direct about this: you are not aiming for a zero-error Google Search Console. That’s not a realistic or even necessary goal.
Google has said itself that it’s normal not to index every page on every site.
- Some errors are intentional (noindexed pages, robots.txt blocks).
- Some are temporary.
- Some are so minor they’ll never affect your traffic or rankings at all.
What you’re actually looking for is whether any errors are affecting pages you care about – like Services pages or cornerstone blog posts. That’s the question to ask every time you open GSC. Start there, fix what matters, and don’t let the rest of it send you into an anxiety spiral lol.
FAQ
How often should I check Google Search Console for errors?
For a small to medium-sized website, once a month is plenty for general maintenance. If you’ve recently done something major like relaunching your site, switching platforms, changing a bunch of URLs, or adding a ton of new pages, check more frequently in the first few weeks after those changes.
What’s the difference between a “warning” and an “error” in GSC?
Errors are issues where Google was prevented from indexing a page at all. Warnings are issues where the page was indexed but something about it might be suboptimal. Errors are generally higher priority, but even then, not all of them need immediate attention.
Do I need to fix every single 404 error?
Not necessarily. Focus on 404s for pages that used to exist and had value, like old blog posts, service pages, or product pages that people might be linking to or looking for. If it’s a URL that never existed and Google stumbled onto it from some random source, you can usually ignore it.
My GSC shows hundreds of errors. Where do I start?
Start with the errors affecting the pages most important to your business. Your homepage, your service or product pages, and your highest-traffic blog posts should be your first priority. From there, look for patterns. If a lot of errors share a similar URL structure, that often points to a single underlying issue you can fix in one go rather than one by one.
The errors in Google Search Console are a lot less scary once you know what you’re actually looking at. Most of them are either…
- expected behavior,
- platform-level decisions you don’t control,
- or minor issues that won’t meaningfully affect your visibility.
The ones that ARE worth your time are the ones touching your most important pages, and now you know exactly what to do about those.
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