'Discovered – currently not indexed': what GSC won't tell you

'Discovered – currently not indexed': what GSC won't tell you

This status in the Pages report is the one that wrecks people. Here's how I actually read it.

What the report does well:
— Buckets every excluded URL by reason — 'Crawled not indexed' vs 'Discovered not indexed' are different diseases
— 'Discovered' means Google knows the URL but chose not to even crawl it — almost always a quality/crawl-budget signal

Where it falls short:
— It won't tell you WHY quality failed — no score, no hint
— Sample export caps at 1,000 URLs per status, useless on big sites
— Data is 2-4 days stale

Pros: free, the single best index diagnostic Google ships
Cons: opaque reasons, 1k export cap, lag

Best for: spotting thin-content and crawl-budget problems at the pattern level.
NOT for: per-URL root-cause — pair it with Live Inspection.