Rise in Crawled-Currently-Not-Indexed Pages: What It Means for Your SEO Strategy
TLDR
Google appears to be indexing content more selectively since March 2026, possibly prioritizing AI grounding over human-readable pages, requiring websites to focus on unique value and agent-readiness.
Optimixed Overview
Optimixed's original report on this story.
According to Marie Haynes, almost every monitored site has seen a rise in pages marked "crawled—currently not indexed" in Google Search Console since March 2026. While Google confirmed at its Toronto Search Central event that this can stem from technical issues or content quality assessments, Haynes speculates the shift reflects Google's move toward using the index primarily as grounding for AI systems rather than for human search results, suggesting content creators should audit commodity content and prepare websites for autonomous AI agents navigating the emerging "agentic web."