High number of excluded (not indexed) pages in Google Search Console

[bluedot]

Hi. Today I checked GSC after a while and I noticed a very high number of excluded pages. Not only that, the number of valid pages was more or less constant, but then suddenly the number dropped significantly and the number of excluded pages rose significantly.

Please see the GSC report here: GSC.jpg

I'm running an ecom shop on Shopify. The excluded pages are normal product pages.

Any idea what could be the issue?

Thanks.

 

[Graybeard]

Are these unique products or duplicate -- not the pages just with the product?

Are you using Consolidate duplicate URLs - Search Console Help
canonical meta <<<sounds like Google Search may be doing that for you ...

 

[bluedot]

The "Crawled - currently not indexed" includes 18 pages - all my blog posts and pages like Terms of Service, Refunds, etc.

The "Discovered - currently not indexed" includes 51 pages and all those are product pages (50 word descriptions and product info).

From your link, maybe this is the issue with my site:

There are valid reasons why your site might have different URLs that point to the same page, or have duplicate or very similar pages at different URLs

To enable dynamic URLs for things like search parameters or session IDs:
https://www.example.com/products?category=dresses&color=green

I have many product variants, so maybe that's the reason?

Here's a report from Siteliner: Siteliner Report.jpg

In the previous link, you can see the number of valid pages climbing again, but I haven't touched the content of the site for 2-3 weeks (it's a store with a limited selection of products).

Does this need any fixing? If yes, how?

Thank you.

 

[bluedot]

Yep, I have a lot of color variations for each products - from 3 to 8.

Is there anything I can do about it? Should I try to fix this with canonical URL's?

 

[Graybeard]

If you have the same thing for sale and the pages are;

1. blue thing
2. red thing
3. yellow thing
4. orange thing

they are not a unique thing: so, yes that might be the reason

Seems they *skipped* the common content
*that means like a page displaying categorized content e.g., ladies shoes 5 selections with a details page for each? Or pages with less than 70 unique content?

Add new unique products (<<<without a lot of completion) and hope some will get indexed and receive search traffic. Make note of the long tail search ranking and the CTR. That may give you some clue on what and how to present your products to the consumer.

Search is a semantics and an authority thing today. I built a custom dynamic site api and got 7,000+ pages indexed but the referral volume sucked. Content demand for specialized or sought out content is everything I am thinking. Who you are means a lot (algorithmic weight) too.

 

[Graybeard]

If the content is almost exactly in duplicate with the exception of the color variation --try it? Google has already applied the canonicalization so IDK. Add new products that are good values and 'rather' unique and don't sweat the small shit.

Don't stop to bury the dead --RIDE ON (Did Genghis Khan say that? LOL). The vanguard of SEO war ...