Hi @Smartie1,
I'm sorry to hear you're having trouble with indexing issues in Google Search Console. It can be frustrating when things aren't showing up as expected.
Alternate page with proper canonical tag
This means that two versions of a page on your website have the same canonical URL. Google will exclude the duplicate version and index the main version of the page. You can read this article: How To Fix “Alternate page with the proper canonical tag.
The key step is to check these highlighted pages and confirm that the canonical URL is correct and you intend to index the canonical URL and not the alternate URL reported.
Not found(404)
According to Google, if some URLs on your site are throwing 404 errors, this fact alone does not hurt you or count against you in Google’s search results. 404 errors are a perfectly normal part of the web; the Internet is always changing, new content is born, old content dies, and when it dies it (ideally) returns a 404 HTTP response code. Search engines are aware of this.
However, if you'd like, you can create 301 redirects from your 404 error pages to your correct pages. The 301 redirects let Google know that the old pages are no longer relevant and up-to-date information can be found on your new page.
Alternatively, you can leave the 404 errors instead of creating the 301 redirects. Even if you don't create a redirect for that 404 URL, Google will eventually find out that the URL isn't available on your website and will stop showing a 404 error for it. If you want to learn more about 404 errors, please refer to this post: Website maintenance: Check and fix 404 error pages.
Page with redirect
It's just normal for Google not to index redirected URLs. What's important is that the destination URL is being indexed properly. You may want to check the URLs listed by Google Search Console and inspect if the destination URLs are loading fine and don't have errors.
You can also check if the pages should be redirected or not. If they shouldnt, then you can take action to remove the redirect.
Blocked by robots.txt
Checked your robots.txt file if there is any directive that's blocking the page or website URLs.
Blocked due to another 4XX error
4xxx issue means that there is something that blocks Googlebot from visiting the page. The server returned a 4xx response code not covered by any other issue type described here for the submitted URL. You should either fix this error, or not submit this URL for indexing.
Soft 404
A soft 404 error happens when the server sends a 200 OK status for the requested page, but Google thinks that the page should return a 404. It may do this if the page content looks like an error, or if there’s a no or thin content. You can find info about soft 404s here: What is a soft 404 error and what to do about it?.
A soft 404 may also occurs when a page exists but has an empty ‘content area’. For example, a collection page with no products, or any other page where there is very little useful content available.
If a page is available, but still gets a soft 404, Google deems this thin content and you should fix that page. Give it some solid, relevant content to show search engines that this page has value. You need to click on the Open indexing report to see the affected URLs.
Excluded by "noindex" tag
Commonly, this notification means that Google tried to index your post/page, but couldn’t due to a noindex tag. If the URL(s) seen with this warning in Google Search Console are URLs like internal search pages, duplicates, sandbox pages etc., then these pages should be noindexed according to Google best practices. If that's the case, no action is needed from you.
If these are URLs of actual pages that should be indexed and are tagged to "noindex", you can check the source code of the page, and look for the meta robots tag if it's set to noindex. Using our Yoast SEO for Shopify app, you will have the option to control the indexing tag of your product pages or post.
Crawled - currently not indexed
This notification suggests that there isn't any problem on your site, but that Google was just taking some time to fully crawl and index your site, which is perfectly normal. If you're running a small website with quality content, this status will automatically resolve. If you notice any other page that Google does not yet crawl, you can force Google to crawl a page using the “Request Indexing” feature.
Also, it can take up to weeks for Google to index your changes, depending on how often your website is crawled and the crawl budget set by Google Search Console. You can read more at the Google's documentation: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7440203?hl=en.
Discovered - currently not indexed
As the URLs in the Google Search Console indexing report are under "Discovered – currently not indexed", this warning means that the page/s was found by Google, but not crawled yet. These URL state will automatically resolve after Google crawls the URLs. Typically, Google wanted to crawl the URL, but this was expected to overload the site; therefore, Google rescheduled the crawl.
If you wish, you can resubmit your sitemap to Google Search Console to re-crawl your Shopify store.
I’m excited to let you know that the Yoast SEO App is now available on Shopify! This app can help you optimize your store’s SEO, improve its visibility and Rich Resuls. You can take advantage of a 14-day free trial to explore its features and see how it works for your store.
I hope this helps. Good luck on optimizing your site.
