Notifications from the Google Search Console (GSC)

Modified on Thu, 9 Jul at 9:43 AM

This page lists general notifications, warnings, alerts or issues reported by Google Search Console for the JobShop:

Notification Type/Message	Details	Information from Google	What needs to be done?
Type: Mobile Usability	More help: Mobile Usability report - Search Console
Clickable elements too close together Content wider than screen	This message is very likely caused by insufficient load times at certain points in time. If Google's crawler runs into a timeout or similar, the page may not be rendered completely and the full HTML may not finish displaying (e.g. the layout is shifted). Google is then unable to process the result correctly.	Clickable elements too close together Touch elements such as buttons and navigation links are placed so close together that mobile users accidentally touch the neighbouring element when tapping the intended one. Content wider than screen Horizontal scrolling is required to see the text and images on the page. This happens when pages use absolute values in CSS declarations or images optimised for a specific browser width, for example 980 pixels.	In all observed cases where this message appeared, the issue resolved itself automatically – at the latest within a day, on Google's next crawl of the pages. We are of course continuing to optimise load times so that this message stops occurring in the long term.
Type: Page Indexing	More: Page Indexing report - Search Console Help
Duplicate – Google chose a different canonical page than the user	So far this has almost exclusively affected pages that are not under our control (i.e. not part of the JobShop).	This URL was marked as the canonical page for multiple pages. However, Google considers a different page more suitable as the canonical page and has instead indexed the page it classified as canonical itself. We recommend explicitly marking this page as a duplicate of the canonical URL. This page was found without a specific crawl request being made for it. When inspecting this URL, the canonical URL selected by Google should be displayed.	No action required
Duplicate – not marked as canonical by the user	→ further cases still need to be observed here, as no clear pattern can yet be derived from the results so far.	Duplicates of this page exist, but none of them has been marked as canonical so far. Google does not consider this page canonical. You should explicitly specify the canonical page. When inspecting this URL, the canonical URL selected by Google should be displayed.
Soft 404	In all observed cases affecting the JobShop, we are already returning a 404 response code. Unfortunately it's unclear why Google still doesn't classify these as “Not found (404)”. Excluding the pages is nonetheless correct, since they no longer exist.	The page returns an error that Google considers a soft 404 error. This means the user-friendly “Not found” message is shown without a corresponding 404 response code. We recommend returning a 404 response code for genuine “Not found” pages, or adding further information to the page to tell Google that it is not a soft 404 error	No action required
Page with redirect	This message is not an error, but expected behaviour. For example, it appears for all customers who were migrated from the non-MTS to the MTS system. During the migration the job IDs changed, and we automatically redirect from the URLs with the old ID to the job URLs with the new ID. Pages that redirect should/must not be indexed. Instead, Google now only indexes the URL with the new ID. Since we use a 301 redirect, Google registers the new URLs as permanent and excludes the old URLs accordingly.	The URL is a redirect and was therefore not added to the index.	No action required
Alternate page with proper canonical tag	For many links we use so-called canonical tags. A canonical tag is an HTML element that tells Google or other search engines that a particular page should be shown in preference to another page with exactly the same content. Using this tag automatically hides the other pages from search engines while they remain visible to visitors. Example: Google registers the following link https://karriere.krongaard.de/?openSidebar=true&filters%5Bcity%5D%5B%5D=128 but excludes it from search, because we have set the page https://karriere.krongaard.de/ as the canonical tag. This is expected behaviour.	This page is a duplicate of a page that Google classifies as canonical. The page correctly points to the indexed canonical page. You don't need to take any further action.	No action required
Not found (404)	Googlebot will probably keep trying to crawl these URLs for some time. However, excluding pages from the index that are no longer reachable is expected behaviour, so everything is fine here.	Fetching this page returns a 404 error. Google found this URL without a specific request or sitemap. It's possible that Google discovered the URL through a link on another website, or that the page existed previously and has since been deleted. Googlebot will probably keep trying to crawl this URL for some time. There is no way to instruct Googlebot to permanently ignore a URL, but Googlebot will crawl it less and less frequently over time. 404 error messages are not a problem as long as they are intentional. If your page has moved, please use a 301 redirect to the new target URL. For more information, see 404 errors.	These messages should disappear after some time. No action required
Discovered – currently not indexed	Broadly speaking, Google considers the content not relevant enough. This can be due to the following factors: Content too short Not linked anywhere Poor performance Automatically generated content and URLs / empty overview pages Duplicate Content For “Discovered – currently not indexed”, links are usually missing, since Google doesn't know the content yet. Other causes are therefore excluded. If Google has already crawled the content, links can still be a cause. After all, they play a key role in assessing the importance of the content. Source: Google Search Console: Discovered/Crawled – Currently not indexed	The page was discovered by Google but not yet crawled. When this reason is given, Google usually tried to crawl the URL, but doing so would have overloaded the website. Google has therefore rescheduled the crawl. This is why the last-crawl-date field in the report is empty.	In most cases we currently assume this is due to excessive load times. Unfortunately it's unclear why Google often does this for only a few jobs within a JobShop.
Crawled – currently not indexed	Broadly speaking, Google considers the content not relevant enough. This can be due to the following factors: Content too short Not linked anywhere Poor performance Automatically generated content and URLs / empty overview pages Duplicate Content For “Discovered – currently not indexed”, links are usually missing, since Google doesn't know the content yet. Other causes are therefore excluded. If Google has already crawled the content, links can still be a cause. After all, they play a key role in assessing the importance of the content. Source: Google Search Console: Discovered/Crawled – Currently not indexed	The page was crawled by Google but not indexed. However, it may be indexed in the future. You don't need to resubmit this URL for crawling.	In most cases we currently assume this is due to excessive load times. Unfortunately it's unclear why Google often does this for only a few jobs within a JobShop.
Google could not find any clearly recognisable videos on the page	Google could not find a video that sufficiently meets the criteria for a clearly, prominently placed video to be used as the video for this page. When Google finds a video on a page that meets these criteria, the video is shown in the video-type search results. However, this is not very relevant for the JobShop, since very few applicants search for job listings by video type. These errors are usually caused by Googlebot crawling a page incorrectly and are typically resolved within a few days.	We recommend fixing other issues before addressing this one. In some cases this issue can be caused by rendering problems within Googlebot, so you may not be able to fix it yourself. However, you should still make sure the video on your page is sufficiently and clearly visible.	No action required
Fix type “Structured data job postings”	More: Learn About Job Posting Schema Markup \| Google Search Central \| Documentation \| Google for Developers
Field "jobLocation" is missing	The structured data used to correctly display job listings in Google for Jobs is missing a "jobLocation" field. This field is mandatory, so this error is classified as critical. We automatically generate structured data for all jobs, and it is currently assumed that the workplace is missing for jobs marked as "Nationwide" or "Remote/Home Office".		Please add a job location in the JobShop backend, as referenced in the examples shown in Google Search Console. If these are remote or "nationwide" positions, you can add multiple locations (e.g. the largest German cities) or the location of the headquarters, and highlight in the title or description that it is a remote position
Video page indexing	More: Video indexing report - Search Console Help
Google could not find any clearly recognisable videos on the page	Google could not find a video that sufficiently meets the criteria for a clearly visible video to be indexed as the video for this page. If a video is not indexed, it will not appear in Google's video search results. This issue could be caused by Googlebot failing to scan the page correctly (sometimes the page gets cut off). These errors are usually caused by Googlebot crawling a page incorrectly and are typically resolved within a few days. In our case it isn't really necessary for the videos to be indexed, since applicants don't search for jobs within videos	If you want a video on this page to be indexed, you should fix any other issues first before addressing this one. (Important: sometimes this behaviour is caused by rendering problems in Googlebot. In that case there may be nothing further you can do to fix it yourself. Even so, you should still make sure the video on your page is clearly visible.) Run the live test of the URL Inspection report for your page and check the screenshot to see how Google views the page. To do this, open the page URL and then click Test Live URL > View Tested Page > Screenshot. If the video is positioned outside the initial screen area, you will need to use a different testing method.	No action required
Video not found on the hosting service	The specified video is missing from the hosting service, or it is on a private hosting service that is not reachable by the Google crawler. Access the service with the video ID to confirm this. Then update your page with the correct ID or URL for your video hosting service. This can also be an issue that occurs when Googlebot doesn't scan a page correctly. This is usually resolved within the next few days		No action required