Why is my website not showing up on Google? Ten checks in order
Most of the time a new site isn't missing, it's waiting: Google hasn't found or crawled it yet. When weeks pass and it's still absent, the cause is usually one of a few settings that tell Google to stay away, or pages that give it little reason to show them. Work through the checks below from the top; the early ones are quick and rule out the serious causes.
First, separate the two problems
If you're asking why is my website not showing up on Google, first work out which of two different problems you have. Either the site isn't indexed (Google has no record of the page at all), or it is indexed but doesn't rank for the words you tried. Search Google for site:yourdomain.com. If nothing comes back, you have an indexing problem and the checks below apply. If your pages are listed but don't appear when you search for, say, "plumber in Leeds", the site is in the index and the question is relevance and competition, covered at the end.
The site: search is a rough guide, not a complete list. For a definite answer per page, use URL Inspection in Search Console. If you haven't set that up, submit the site to Google Search Console first; the rest of this guide leans on its reports.
The checks, in order
- Is it actually live at a public address? Open it in a private window on a phone using mobile data. Staging links, preview links that need a sign-in and password-protected pages can't be indexed.
- Has enough time passed? Google's own guidance says it can take a few weeks to notice a new site. If it has been days, submit a sitemap and wait before changing anything.
- Is there a
noindex? View the page source and search fornoindexin a robots meta tag, and check the response headers forX-Robots-Tag. Builders often add it to drafts and forget to remove it at launch. - Does
robots.txtblock crawling? Open/robots.txt. A lineDisallow: /underUser-agent: *blocks everything. Blocking crawling is not the same asnoindex, and mixing the two causes confusion: Google can't see anoindexon a page it isn't allowed to fetch. - What does the Page indexing report say? In Search Console, look up the URL. The reason tells you where to go next: "Discovered, currently not indexed" is a queue, "Crawled, currently not indexed" is a quality or duplication judgement, and "Blocked by robots.txt" is check four.
- Is the canonical pointing elsewhere? A
rel="canonical"tag naming another URL tells Google to index that one instead. A copied template that points every page at the home page is a common culprit; see what a canonical tag does. - Is there real content in the HTML? Inspect the page and use View crawled page. If the text only appears after scripts run, or the page is mostly images, Google may see very little to index.
- Is it a duplicate? The same text on
wwwand the bare domain, or on an old address, leaves Google to choose one. Pick one address and redirect the other. - Does anything link to it? A site with no links from anywhere is harder to discover. A Google Business Profile, directory listings and your social profiles all give Google a path in.
- Was there a manual action or security issue? Rare for a small new site, but Search Console lists both under Security and Manual actions. Check them once to rule them out.
If it's indexed but doesn't rank
Search for your business name in quotes. If you appear for that but not for what you do, the site is fine technically and the work is in the content: a unique title on each page that says what and where, headings that match how people describe the service, and enough specific detail for Google to tell you apart. The on-page SEO guide for small businesses covers that, and writing title tags is the single change with the most effect on what searchers see.
Anticode sites
Each published Anticode site serves its own robots.txt and sitemap.xml, and design-engine pages are plain HTML with no scripts, so the text Google needs is in the page it fetches. That rules out checks four and seven for those pages, though it's still worth confirming with URL Inspection. Anticode doesn't redirect between www and the bare domain on a custom domain, so connect the one address you want people to use and link to that one everywhere. Two things remain yours: the words on the page, which only you can make specific, and time. App builds are different: the program runs inside a frame on the published page, so inspect it to see how much text Google picks up, and keep important facts on a design-engine page where you can.
Mistakes that make it worse
- Changing the domain or every URL while waiting. Each change restarts discovery. Settle the address before launch.
- Buying links or listing in hundreds of directories. Low-quality links don't speed up indexing and can harm trust.
- Blocking a page in
robots.txtto remove it. Usenoindexand let Google crawl the page so it can see the instruction. - Judging by your own searches. Results vary by location and history. Search Console's Performance report shows what others see.
Limits
No setting guarantees a place in Google's index, and neither Google nor any website builder can promise rankings. This guide covers Google; Bing indexes separately, and AI assistants use their own crawlers and search partners, which getting cited by AI search explains.
Questions people ask
Does Google charge to list my website?
No. Organic listings are free. Paid ads are a separate product and don't affect whether your pages are indexed.
My site was on Google and has disappeared. What changed?
Check for a new noindex, a changed robots.txt, a domain or URL change without redirects, or an expired domain or certificate. Search Console's Page indexing report usually shows the date it changed.
Will requesting indexing fix it?
It can speed up the first crawl of an important page, but it won't override a noindex, a block or a canonical pointing elsewhere.