Google has updated the index coverage report in Google Search Console with more "more fine-grained" status and categories. The change will cause some of the errors or statuses to "relabeled with the new, more specific categories," Google said.
The example Google gave was that the "crawl anomaly [status] is no longer reported, and has been replaced with more specific issues." Google said "as a result, you will see the appearance of new status types in your report, although the total number of items in each category (error, warning, valid, excluded) should not change significantly, only the status descriptions of any labeled items."
This may be related to the validation temporarily disabled notice we saw on the coverage report for several weeks now.
Google did link to a blog post with more details but that blog post currently does not load and leads to a 404 page. Also, it does not seem like the help document on this report was updated yet, at least not at the time this was published.
Here is what was posted by Google:
Additional, more fine-grained index coverage statuses are now available. This will cause some pages in the report to be relabeled with the new, more specific categories (for example, "Crawl anomaly" is no longer reported, and has been replaced with more specific issues). As a result, you will see the appearance of new status types in your report, although the total number of items in each category (error, warning, valid, excluded) should not change significantly, only the status descriptions of any labeled items.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
Update: When I wrote this article, not much changed but it now seems to be rolling out. Here are some screen shots from Glenn Gabe. Note, the Google blog post at this time still 404s.
Check your Coverage reporting. Crawl anomaly just dropped to 0 (as Google reported). There are a few new categories there, but nothing crazy from what I can see. E.g. now a 4XX bucket. pic.twitter.com/yaYifHV9mf
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) January 11, 2021
Update 2: The blog post went live at 10:45am ET:
The change is focused on providing a more accurate state to existing issues, which should help you solve them more easily. The list of changes include:
- Removal of the generic "crawl anomaly" issue type - all crawls errors should now be mapped to an issue with a finer resolution.
- Pages that were submitted but blocked by robots.txt and got indexed are now reported as "indexed but blocked" (warning) instead of "submitted but blocked" (error)
- Addition of a new issue: "indexed without content" (warning)
- Soft 404 reporting is now more accurate
Update 3:
Finally found a property w/the new category "indexed without content". Just 3 pages (on a very large site), but interesting finding. And note, I have NOT seeing this category much across many properties I checked. At least yet. Also, it's under Warnings in the Coverage report. pic.twitter.com/xU7zWBmAz2
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) January 11, 2021
