Why your website is not showing up on Google

Type site: followed by your domain into Google, with no space, as in site:example.co.uk. The result settles the question.

• No results: Google has not indexed the site. Go to the next section.
• Some pages, but not the ones that matter: those pages have an indexing problem of their own.
• The pages are all there: the site is indexed, and the problem is where it is placed.

A site that is absent altogether is almost always new, unannounced or blocked.

The site is new

Google finds sites by following links and reading sitemaps. A new site with neither waits. Add the site to Google Search Console, submit the sitemap, and request indexing for the home page.

The site tells Google to stay away

Four things block a site, and all four are easy to leave on by accident.

• A noindex instruction in the pages, often a setting left over from building the site.
• A robots.txt file that disallows everything.
• A password or “coming soon” page in front of the site.
• A setting in the website builder that hides the site from search engines.

Website builders each have their own switch. Our guide to a Wix site not showing on Google covers that platform.

Search Console says why

Search Console’s URL Inspection tool gives Google’s own answer for any address: whether it is indexed and, if not, the reason. Its Page indexing report lists every reason across the site.

The Page indexing report names a reason for each page left out. Three account for most questions.

• Crawled, currently not indexed: Google read the page and left it out.
• Discovered, currently not indexed: Google knows the address and has not fetched it.
• Page with redirect: the address forwards to another, which is usually correct.

An indexed site that nobody finds has a ranking problem, and the causes are different.

• The search is too broad. A new plumber’s site will appear for its own name long before it appears for “plumber”.
• No page targets the search. Google ranks pages, and a search with no page written for it has nothing to rank.
• The competition is stronger. Other sites have more content, more links and more history.
• For local searches, the Google Business Profile is missing, incomplete or unverified.

Our guide to why a competitor outranks you compares one of your pages with one of theirs, check by check.

Work through the causes from the most basic to the least: confirm the site can be indexed, submit it, read what Search Console reports, then build the pages and earn the links that move it up. Fixing a title on a page Google is blocked from reading changes nothing.