Hi everyone, I’m running a Discourse forum (forum.evteam.pl), and I’m struggling with getting my pages indexed by Google. While a few pages have been indexed, most remain unindexed despite submitting a sitemap. Here’s the current situation: Only 8 pages indexed out of 180+. The number of indexed pages briefly increased but then dropped again. Google Search Console shows 172 pages as non-indexed. The sitemap has not been approved for a long time. Search performance is very low, with barely any clicks from Google. [GSC] I have checked the following: :white_check_mark: Robots.txt – No obvious restrictions. :white_check_mark: Sitemap.xml – Submitted, but still not approved. :white_check_mark: Noindex Tags – Not present on key pages. :white_check_mark: Google Search Console – No manual penalties or security issues. Has anyone experienced similar issues with Discourse forums? Could this be due to Google’s indexing policies, or is there something I might be missing? Any tips on how to resolve this? Thanks in advance!

Can you check /admin/reports/web_crawlers to see if Googlebot is in the list? the site setting allowed_crawler_user_agents to make sure you are not blocking Google by accident (share this here if possible) Discourse SEO overview (sitemap / robots.txt) may be a useful topic for you.

Thanks for your suggestions! I checked /admin/reports/web_crawlers, and Googlebot is on the list, so it is crawling the forum. The allowed_crawler_user_agents list was empty, so I added: Googlebot bingbot DuckDuckBot I’ve also resubmitted the sitemap in Google Search Console and will monitor if indexing improves over the next few days.

Thanks for pointing that out! I wasn’t aware that Google uses other crawlers that don’t explicitly declare Googlebot. I’ll clear the allowed_crawler_user_agents list to avoid accidentally blocking anything.

Google Not Indexing Discourse Forum – Sitemap Not Approved

Product Support

Jagster (Jakke Flemming) March 31, 2025, 1:51pm 5

That could be potentially bad idea — unless you are totally sure every other bots can be disallowed. Google is using a lot crawlers that aren’t declaring googlebot string.

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Google Not Indexing Discourse Forum – Sitemap Not Approved

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