Select Language:
Google’s John Mueller and Martin Splitt recently discussed the Google Search Console indexing report on the latest Search Off the Record podcast. They highlighted how quality issues, such as low-quality AI-generated content, can cause pages to lose trustworthiness and potentially prevent them from being indexed by Google. This situation may show up as a “crawled — currently not indexed” status on the index report in some cases.
While Mueller doesn’t explicitly condemn AI-produced content, he notes that if the content screams AI generation—lacking originality and uniqueness—Google might choose not to index the page. If the content appears generic or anyone could have written it, the site’s overall quality could be negatively impacted, leading to indexing problems. This isn’t a new concern; it’s an ongoing conversation in the SEO community.
Splitt asked Mueller whether pages that Google visits but doesn’t index are often a sign of quality issues. Mueller responded that sometimes, it indeed points to quality concerns. When systems detect low quality, they tend to reduce the number of pages they crawl and index, minimizing their effort on sites that might not meet quality standards. These pages become visible as “discovered not indexed” or “crawled not indexed,” indicating that Google is aware of them but has reservations about indexing.
Mueller emphasizes that these situations aren’t usually something to fix with just technical fixes. Instead, website owners should take a step back to assess their overall content quality. Recognizing broad patterns, like many pages not being indexed without clear technical reasons, suggests the need to evaluate the content’s value from an external perspective. This can be especially revealing if much of the website relies on AI-generated material that might be perceived as unoriginal or lacking in value. While not all AI content is problematic, sites that produce content anyone can replicate and offers little value can harm the site’s perceived quality.
The video discussion begins around 20 minutes and 32 seconds into the recording, offering a deeper dive into these topics.
ChatGPT
Perplexity
Gemini AI
Grok AI
