Gary Illyes from Google said that if a URL has a status within Google Search Console as "URL is unknown to Google" that means that URL is really unknown to Google and has zero priority within Google Search systems.
The question was from Adam Gent who posted on LinkedIn - Adam asked:
Is it reasonable to assume that pages with the "URL is unknown to Google" index state in GSC have the lowest crawl priority in your system?I've noticed that previously indexed pages which become not indexed eventually get given this indexing state. If nothing changes.
You've talked about how indexed pages can moved to 'crawled - currently not indexed'. And I wondered if the URL is unknown to Google and is just the last stop at the bottom of the barrel lane.
Gary Illyes from Google replied:
Those have no priority; they are not known to Google (Search) so inherently they have no priority whatsoever. URLs move between states as we collect signals for them, and in this particular case the signals told a story that made our systems "forget" that URL exists. I guess you could say it actually fell out the barrel altogether.
I mean, I guess this makes logical sense...
Forum discussion at LinkedIn.
