Website not showing up on Google: 10 reasons and a 15-minute self-check

Short answer: most websites that are not on Google have one of three problems: indexing is switched off (a noindex tag or a CMS setting), the site is blocked in robots.txt, or Google simply has not discovered it yet. Run a site:yourdomain.com search, check the Pages report and URL Inspection in Google Search Console, and search the page source for “noindex”. It takes 15 minutes.

There is a second scenario: the site is indexed and shows up for your company name, but not for your services. That is a different problem with a different fix. Below is the self-check first, then ten reasons with how to spot and fix each one.

Check it yourself in 15 minutes

1. site: search: type site:yourdomain.com into Google. No results at all means the site is not indexed. Some results but missing key pages means a page-level problem. The count is approximate, so treat it as a signal only.
2. Google Search Console: if the site is not verified yet, verify it with a DNS record at your domain registrar. Open Indexing → Pages to see how many pages are indexed and why the rest are excluded.
3. URL Inspection: paste your home page and a key service page into the bar at the top of Search Console. You will see whether the page is on Google, whether indexing is allowed, and which canonical URL Google chose.
4. robots.txt: open yourdomain.com/robots.txt. A Disallow: / line under User-agent: * blocks crawling of the whole site.
5. Page source: open the page, press Ctrl+U (Cmd+Option+U on a Mac) and search for “noindex”. If it appears in <meta name="robots">, the page is excluded. Search for “canonical” too: it should point to the same page.
6. CMS settings: in WordPress, Settings → Reading → Search engine visibility (“Discourage search engines from indexing this site” must be unticked). In Shopify, check that the store password is off. In Webflow, check the indexing settings for the site and its webflow.io subdomain.
7. Penalties and security: in Search Console open Manual actions and Security issues. Both should be empty.

10 reasons your website is not on Google

1. noindex is switched on

The most common cause after a launch. Sites are hidden from search during development and nobody unhides them at go-live. In WordPress it is a single checkbox in the Reading settings; SEO plugins add separate switches per page type. noindex can also arrive as an X-Robots-Tag HTTP header, which you only see in the server response headers or in URL Inspection.

2. robots.txt blocks the site

robots.txt controls crawling. A Disallow: / left over from staging stops Google from visiting. A page may still appear in results without a description, but it will not rank properly.

3. Google has not found the site

A new domain with no links pointing to it and no sitemap can go unnoticed for weeks. Verify the site in Search Console, submit sitemap.xml, request indexing for key pages, and link to the site from your Google Business Profile and social profiles.

4. The canonical tag points elsewhere

The canonical tag tells Google which page is the main one among similar pages. If every page’s canonical points to the home page, an old URL or a staging domain, Google indexes the wrong thing.

5. Duplicate URLs

The site loads with and without www, over http and https, with and without a trailing slash, and a staging copy lives on a subdomain. Google picks one version itself, not always the one you want. The fix is one address, with 301 redirects from the others.

6. “Crawled – currently not indexed”

Google saw the page and decided not to index it. Often these are thin pages: a few sentences, manufacturer product descriptions copied everywhere, empty categories, tag archives. Fewer weak pages and more useful content on the ones you keep is the way out.

7. Content only appears after JavaScript runs

If copy and links are loaded by scripts and the HTML source is empty, Google may see less than a person does. In URL Inspection, open “View crawled page” and compare it with what you see in the browser.

8. The site is down, password-protected or erroring

A Shopify store password, maintenance mode, hosting outages, 5xx errors, a firewall or DDoS protection blocking bots. Google cannot index what it cannot open.

9. Manual action or a hack

The site was hacked and spam pages were injected, or Google applied a manual action for a policy violation. Both show up in Search Console. Clean the site, fix the cause and request a review.

10. You are on Google, just not for the right queries

Your name finds you; “dentist near me” or “buy porcelain tiles” does not. That is competition, not indexing: you need pages for specific services, copy that answers the query, speed (see Core Web Vitals in plain English), links and, for a local business, a complete Google Business Profile with reviews. The same signals increasingly decide whether AI assistants mention you: see how to show up in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI answers.

Reason, how to check, how to fix

Reason	How to check	How to fix
noindex	Page source, URL Inspection, CMS settings	Remove it, request indexing
robots.txt	/robots.txt, Pages report	Remove Disallow: /, add a Sitemap line
Not discovered	site:, Search Console	Verify the site, submit the sitemap
Wrong canonical	Page source, URL Inspection	Each page’s canonical points to itself
Duplicate URLs	Open www/non-www, http/https	301 redirects to one version
Thin content	Pages report: “Crawled – currently not indexed”	Merge or expand pages
JavaScript content	“View crawled page”	Server-render key copy
Unavailable	URL Inspection, uptime monitoring	Remove the password, fix the firewall, stable hosting
Penalty, hack	Manual actions, Security issues	Clean up, request a review
Weak rankings	Performance report in Search Console	Service pages, local SEO, Google Business Profile

Platform specifics

• WordPress: besides the Reading setting, SEO plugins (Yoast, Rank Math) can set noindex for specific page types, and maintenance-mode plugins can hide the whole site. After moving from a staging domain, make sure the old address is gone from settings and the database.
• Shopify: while the store is password-protected, Google will not index it. Shopify generates robots.txt and the sitemap itself; product duplicates inside collections are usually handled by the theme’s canonical tag, so check that theme edits did not break it.
• Webflow: check the indexing setting for the webflow.io subdomain and that the global canonical URL points to your own domain.
• Squarespace: a site on a trial is closed to visitors and search, as are password-protected pages; individual pages can also be hidden from search in their SEO settings, so check the key ones.
• React, Vue and Next.js sites: make sure key pages return their copy in the server HTML, not only after scripts load.

After the fix

• Request indexing of key pages through URL Inspection.
• Submit or resubmit the sitemap.
• Make sure redirects resolve in a single hop, with no chains. If the site dropped out of Google after a redesign or a move, work through our site migration checklist.
• Check the Pages report again after one to two weeks; the indexed count should grow.
• On a multilingual site, check hreflang: every language version links to all the others and to itself.

From our own work

For a building materials store on WooCommerce, technical SEO was built in alongside development: an SEO plugin, caching and speed work so a large catalogue with thousands of products could be crawled properly. For a Shopify store for a supplements brand, we wrote a script to bulk-update product SEO fields, set up a product feed for Google and launched an English version. These things are far easier to get right at launch than to debug later when pages are missing from search.

We check indexing on our own site the same way described above: URL Inspection, the Pages report and server response headers for different user agents.

When to bring in a specialist

• you went through the checklist and did not find the cause;
• Search Console lists hundreds of excluded pages and you cannot tell which ones matter;
• the site moved to a new domain or platform and Google traffic dropped;
• there is a manual action or a hacking warning;
• you are on Google, but competitors consistently outrank you for your key services.

The problem is covered in more detail on the not showing up on Google page. A good starting point is a technical audit (from €300): indexing, duplicates, metadata and speed, with a prioritised fix list. To grow in search and on Maps, see technical and local SEO (from €400). If the site is so dated that patching costs more than rebuilding, we will propose a new site with SEO built in. Send us your URL and we will tell you why Google is not showing it.

FAQ

How long does Google take to index a new website?

Anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. You can speed it up by verifying the site in Google Search Console, submitting a sitemap and requesting indexing of key pages through URL Inspection. Google does not guarantee a timeframe.

Why does my site show up for my company name but not for my services?

The site is indexed but not competitive for generic queries. It lacks dedicated service pages, copy that answers the query, links and, for a local business, a complete Google Business Profile. That is an SEO problem, not an indexing one.

Is the site: search reliable?

As a quick signal, yes, but the result count is approximate. The Pages report and URL Inspection in Google Search Console give the accurate picture.

What if my site was hacked and Google shows a warning?

Restore from a clean backup or remove the malicious code, update the software and passwords, then request a review in the Security issues report in Search Console. The review will fail until the site is clean.

How much does it cost to get a site into Google?

A technical audit starts at €300; technical and local SEO starts at €400. If the cause is a single setting such as noindex, the fix takes minutes, and the audit shows whether anything else is wrong.