Emails from Google Search Console: what they mean and what to do

Once your store is connected to Google Search Console, Google emails you whenever it notices something new. The subject lines sound alarming, like "New reasons prevent pages from being indexed on site yourstore.com". Almost always, there is nothing to fix.

Why Google sends these emails

Google checks every address it finds on your store, including ones that are kept out of search on purpose: your cart, your legal pages, old addresses that now redirect, and products you deleted. Each time it finds a new reason to leave a page out, it sends an email. A store with thousands of products will always have some pages in these lists, and that is normal.

Google only indexes the pages it thinks are worth showing. Your category pages, best products, articles and homepage are the ones that matter.

"Monitor the Google Search traffic" email

This is a welcome email. Google has started showing your store in its results and wants you to know where to see the numbers. No action is needed. You can see the same figures in your FreshStore account under Stores, open your store, then Search > Google.

What each reason means

Normal, no action needed

• Not found (404). A product, category, brand or article was deleted, by you or by a clean up of products with no offers left. Google remembers the old address and checks it again. It drops out of the report on its own.

• Page with redirect. The address moved. When you change the address of a product, category, brand or article, your store redirects the old one to the new one. Addresses that start with http:// or a different version of your domain also redirect to your main address. Google indexes the new address instead.

• Blocked by robots.txt. Your store asks search engines not to follow buy buttons, because they lead to the retailer rather than to a page on your store. It also blocks sorted copies of product lists. Both are correct.

• Excluded by 'noindex' tag. Your store keeps the cart, search results, privacy policy, cookie policy and terms of use out of Google on purpose. Pages you set to Hide from search engines are also listed here.

• Alternative page with proper canonical tag. Google found two addresses for the same content and indexed the right one. It is a notice only.

• Duplicate without user-selected canonical. Google found pages it considers too similar and picked one to show. If it lists pages you care about, adding your own words to them helps (see Tips below).

• Crawled, currently not indexed and Discovered, currently not indexed. Google knows about the page but has not added it yet. New stores see this a lot. Google adds pages over weeks and months as your store builds up trust.

Worth contacting us about

• Server error (5xx), if it lists more than a page or two, or keeps coming back.

• Your homepage appears in any of the lists above, or is still not indexed a few weeks after you connected Google.

• A page you want in Google shows noindex, and you did not turn on Hide from search engines for it.

• Normal store pages, such as products or categories, show Blocked by robots.txt. If you have edited your robots.txt file at Store > Settings > Traffic, check your changes first.

Other emails from Google

• Merchant listings or Product snippets structured data issues. This is about the product details your store sends to Google for rich results, such as price and stars. It usually means one or two products are missing a detail, like shipping or an available offer. No action is needed. If you want to check, the email lists the product, and you can look at its offers in your store admin.

• Mobile usability issues. Your store works on every device, so this is usually a false alarm. See How to check for Mobile Usability issues with Google.

How to see the details

Click the button in the email to open the report in Google Search Console. Under Indexing > Pages, click a reason to see example addresses.

You can also check your pages without leaving FreshStore. In your account, go to Stores, open your store, then Search > Google > Indexing. It shows which pages are indexed, which are not indexed yet, and any errors.

Do I need to click "Validate fix"?

No. Validate fix is optional. It asks Google to recheck the listed pages sooner, but Google rechecks them anyway. For the normal reasons above there is nothing to validate, and a validation can report "failed" because those pages are still deliberately left out.

Will the emails stop?

We recently changed how stores handle buy buttons, sorted lists, page 2 and later of a list, and deleted products, so Google finds far fewer of these addresses. Notices that already exist fade as Google rechecks your store. That takes a few weeks, sometimes longer for a big store. New emails may still arrive now and then, and the advice above still applies.

How to turn these emails off

Google sends these emails, not FreshStore, so you turn them off in Search Console. Your stores keep working the same way, and the reports stay in Search Console for you to check whenever you like.

1. Open Google Search Console.

2. Click Settings at the bottom of the menu on the left.

3. Click Email preferences.

4. Untick the emails you do not want, then click Save.

The setting applies to every site in your Search Console account, so you only do it once. We suggest you keep emails about security issues and manual actions turned on, as those are the rare ones that need you.

Tips

• Pages with your own words in them get indexed faster. Write a short introduction for your main categories, and add articles about your niche.

• Make sure your sitemap is submitted. Go to Search > Google > Sitemap on your store and click Submit sitemap if it is not sent yet.

• Give it time. A new store usually takes a few months to get most of its important pages indexed.