Google says the home page isn’t in its index, so it can’t appear in search results. For most websites the home page brings in branded searches, so this can cost a lot of traffic.
What it means
Google’s URL Inspection gives the home page a verdict other than indexed. The action shows Google’s reason next to the page, for example “Crawled - currently not indexed”, “Page with redirect” or “Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user”.
What triggers it
For websites linked to Search Console, Uptime monitoring’s daily checks ask the URL Inspection API about each watched page. A home page that isn’t indexed raises a Critical issue. Pages set to noindex or answering with an error are left out, because they raise their own issues. When a page that was indexed drops out, a timeline note is added too.
Common causes
- The home page redirects, or its canonical tag points to another address, such as the www or non-www version.
- robots.txt blocks it, or Google met server errors when it tried to crawl.
- A new or moved website that Google hasn’t indexed yet.
How to fix it
- In Search Console, inspect the URL and read why Google hasn’t indexed it.
- Fix what it reports: redirects, the canonical tag, robots.txt rules or server errors.
- Run a live test of the URL, then request indexing.
When it clears
The issue goes once URL Inspection reports the page as indexed, which can take from a few days to a few weeks after you request it. For other pages, see Pages not in Google’s index.
After 7 days without the problem, the action drops off the board. If you marked it done and the problem is still detected 14 days later, it returns as “Fix didn’t work”.