Finding and Fixing Indexing Problems on a Defense Firm Website
A defense firm can publish a page for every charge it handles and every courthouse it appears in, and Google may still leave many of those pages out of its index. The site looks finished to the lawyer who paid for it. To someone searching for a DUI lawyer in the next county over, the page the firm built for exactly that search does not exist.
These problems are quiet, but they leave records. Google Search Console lists the URLs it declined to index and gives a reason for each, and on law firm sites those reasons usually trace back to a handful of repeat causes. If the firm has not set up Search Console yet, work through a first week in Google Search Console for defense lawyers first, then come back once the property has collected some data.
Start with the Page indexing report
Open Indexing, then Pages. The chart at the top splits the site into indexed and not indexed URLs, and the table below it, "Why pages aren't indexed," groups the excluded URLs by reason. The labels you will see most often on a defense site are "Crawled - currently not indexed," "Discovered - currently not indexed," "Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user," "Duplicate without user-selected canonical" and "Page with redirect."
Some of these are harmless. An old URL that now redirects to its replacement belongs under "Page with redirect." The rows that need attention are the ones holding pages you actually want found, like the charge pages a client would land on from a search.
Export each status and compare the URLs against a list of the pages the firm considers important. Anything on that list sitting in an excluded bucket goes on the work list. For a single page, the URL Inspection tool shows whether Google has it indexed and which URL Google picked as the canonical version.
Pages Google found and passed over
"Discovered - currently not indexed" means Google knows the URL exists but has not crawled it. "Crawled - currently not indexed" means Google fetched the page and chose to leave it out. On defense sites both tend to collect short pages that repeat each other, along with orphans that nothing else on the site links to.
Orphans are the easiest fix. A charge page that is reachable only through the sitemap sends a weak signal about its own importance. Link it from the matching practice area page and from any related charge pages, using plain anchor text that names the offense.
After the page has been improved and linked, request indexing through URL Inspection once. Google's own guidance says crawling can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, and asking repeatedly does not move a URL up the queue.
Duplicate city pages
This is the most common pattern on criminal defense sites. A firm wants to rank in twenty towns, so twenty pages go up with the same text and a different city name in the headline. Google sees near-identical pages, picks one to keep and files the rest under one of the duplicate statuses.
Google's documentation treats a rel="canonical" tag and a redirect as strong signals about which URL should be canonical. A signal is still only a signal, and when the content of two pages is essentially the same, Google can and does pick its own canonical.
The fix is editorial. Decide which locations genuinely deserve their own page, which usually means courts where the firm regularly appears. A real location page talks about that courthouse, the local diversion or treatment court options, how arraignments are scheduled there and what a family should expect on the first court date. Towns that cannot support that level of detail are better folded into a regional or county page, with 301 redirects from the old URLs.
Be careful with wording on location pages. Copy that suggests an office in a town where the firm has none can run into the misleading advertising rules most states enforce, so check your state bar's advertising rules before publishing.
Thin charge pages
A charge page with two hundred words of general reassurance and a phone number gives Google little reason to index it over the many similar pages already in its results.
A charge page that earns its place usually covers the statute and how your state grades the offense, the range of possible penalties and any collateral consequences, such as license suspension or immigration exposure. It explains what happens at the first appearance in local courts and the defenses that commonly come up. Have the lawyer write it or review every line, and keep outcome language within what your state bar allows.
Look for overlap while you are at it. Separate pages for "shoplifting," "petty theft" and "theft crimes" that say the same things will compete with each other. One strong page with sections for each variation often does better than three weak ones.
Redirect chains and loops
Every redesign leaves redirects behind. After a few years of HTTPS changes, www changes and old page names from previous builders, one old link might pass through four hops before it reaches a live page.
Google's documentation says Googlebot generally follows up to 10 redirect hops. Past that, or when two rules point at each other, the URL shows up as "Redirect error." Short chains still cost crawl time and add load time on phones.
To clean them up:
- Crawl the site with a desktop SEO crawler and export every redirect with its full path.
- Rewrite each rule so the original URL points straight to the final live page in one hop.
- Update internal links, menus and footer links to use final URLs directly.
- Make sure the XML sitemap lists only live pages that return a 200 status.
- Use "Validate fix" in the Page indexing report so Google rechecks the affected URLs.
For a broader set of crawl, speed and site structure topics, see these technical SEO guides for law firm websites.
Questions defense lawyers ask about indexing
Do I need to fix every URL in the not indexed list?
No. Old redirected URLs and properly canonicalized duplicates are expected to sit there. Focus on pages you want people to find.
Should I delete weak city pages or set them to noindex?
If a page has no real purpose, redirect it to the closest relevant page so any links pointing at it still count. Noindex makes sense for pages visitors need but searchers do not, like a thank-you page after a form.
How soon will I see changes after fixing these problems?
Expect weeks, not days. Google recrawls on its own schedule, so check the Page indexing report again about a month after the work is done.
SBD Marketing works only with criminal defense law firms, one firm per city, and helps them with SEO audits that catch problems like these, defense firm web design, rankings in Google search and the map pack for the charges they handle, and visibility in AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity.