You logged into Google Search Console for the first time in a while. There are 47 issues. Some are red, some are yellow, some have graphs next to them that are trending downward.
It's easy to panic. It's also easy to ignore the whole thing and close the tab. Neither approach helps.
Most of the errors and warnings Google flags are either minor or don't apply to your business. But some of them genuinely cost you traffic. Here's how to work out which is which.
The issues that actually affect traffic
These are the ones worth fixing first - because they're preventing people from finding your site or accessing it properly.
Pages not indexed due to crawl errors.
If Search Console says pages aren't being indexed because Googlebot can't reach them, that's a real problem. Common causes include server errors, DNS issues, or pages blocked by robots.txt. Check the specific error and fix it.
Mobile usability problems.
If Google says your site has mobile usability issues - text too small, clickable elements too close together, content wider than the screen - those affect rankings. Mobile usability has been a ranking factor since 2015. These are worth addressing.
Core Web Vitals failures.
If your site fails Core Web Vitals (LCP, CLS, INP), it affects how Google ranks you - and more importantly, it affects whether people leave immediately after landing on your site. We wrote about why websites are slow previously - many of the same fixes apply here.
Security issues.
If Search Console flags malware, hacked content, or security vulnerabilities, fix those immediately. Google will de-rank or remove sites with active security problems.
The issues that look bad but usually don't matter
These are the ones that generate a lot of warnings but rarely affect your ability to get traffic.
Soft 404 errors.
Google thinks a page is a 404 error page even though it returns a 200 status code. This usually happens with search results pages, filtered product listings, or pages that say "no results found". Unless it's affecting pages you actually want indexed, it's noise.
Duplicate content warnings.
Google flags pages with similar content. For a lot of small business sites, this happens because product pages have similar descriptions, or service pages follow the same template. Unless you're genuinely publishing the same article twice, this doesn't hurt you - Google just picks one version to show in search.
Structured data errors.
If you have schema markup on your site and it's not perfect, Google will flag it. These errors don't prevent your site from ranking. They just mean you're not getting rich results (star ratings, FAQs, event listings) in search. Worth fixing if you're actively using structured data, not urgent if you're not.
Crawled - currently not indexed.
This means Google looked at a page and decided not to include it in search results. This is normal for things like privacy policies, terms and conditions, old blog posts with no traffic, or pages you don't actually need ranking. If it's a page you want to rank, improve the content - don't just assume Google is wrong.
How to prioritise
If you have more than a dozen issues flagged and you're not sure where to start, work through them in this order:
Security issues (fix immediately)
Mobile usability problems (affects rankings and user experience)
Core Web Vitals failures (same)
Pages not indexed that you want indexed (check why)
Everything else (ignore or fix when you have time)
The reality is that most small business websites have a handful of issues that matter and a long tail of warnings that don't. Search Console is useful for identifying the former - but it's not designed to filter out the noise for you.
If you're not sure which category your issues fall into, or you want someone to look at your Search Console data and give you a straight answer about what's worth fixing, get in touch. We do this for clients as part of our website development and maintenance work.