Playbook: Diagnose why crawl-to-index lag is eating your launch

Playbook: Diagnose why crawl-to-index lag is eating your launch
Googlebot crawled the page days ago but it's still not indexed. Walk this decision tree.

Setup:
— Inspect URL > check Crawl > Crawled as and Last crawl
— If crawled but not indexed, read the exact coverage state
— Discovered - currently not indexed = crawl budget/quality signal, NOT a technical bug
— Crawled - currently not indexed = quality/duplication signal add internal links + unique value
— Check the rendered HTML tab for empty JS-only content

What it does well: Inspect URL gives you Google's literal verdict per URL, free.

Where it falls short: it won't tell you the quality threshold, and 'currently not indexed' has no ETA you're guessing at the cause.

Pros:
— Exact per-URL state
— Shows rendered HTML
Cons:
— No quality score exposed
— No fix-it ETA

Best for: triaging individual stuck URLs. NOT for site-wide patterns use the Page Indexing aggregate report there.