Why your website is not showing up on Google, and how to fix it.

Find out which problem you have

Two searches on your phone tell you most of what you need to know.

• Search for your business name and town, as they appear on your sign. If your website comes up, Google has it. Your problem is that it does not show for searches such as "boiler repair Croydon", which is about ranking.
• Search for site:yourdomain.com, with your own domain and no space after the colon. A list of your pages means Google has indexed at least those. No results means Google has none of your pages yet.

Google notes that a site: search does not always list every indexed page, so treat it as a quick sign rather than a count. The full answer, page by page, is in Search Console.

The two searches split the problem in two. Not indexed means Google has not stored your pages, so they cannot appear for any search at all. Indexed but not ranking means Google has them and puts other pages first. The fixes are different, so rule out the first before you spend anything on the second.

Set up Search Console in the business's name

Google Search Console is free, and it is where Google tells you why each page is or is not in its index. Set it up before you change anything else.

• Sign in at search.google.com/search-console with a Google account the business owns, not the personal account of whoever built the site.
• Add a Domain property. It covers every version of your address, with and without www, and you verify it by adding a TXT record at the company where you registered the domain. Search Console shows you the record to copy.
• If you cannot reach the domain settings, add a URL-prefix property instead. It can be verified with an HTML file, a tag on the home page or your Google Analytics account. If a former web designer holds the domain, get it back first.
• Under Sitemaps, submit your sitemap. Most website platforms make one for you, often at yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml. If you cannot find yours, ask whoever built the site.
• Add your web designer or agency as a user. They can help without owning your data.

A new TXT record can take a while to show, so if verification fails at first, wait and try again before you decide you got it wrong.

Inspect your home page first

Paste your home page address into the bar at the top of Search Console. URL Inspection gives one of two answers:

• "URL is on Google": the page is indexed and can appear in results. Google is clear that this does not promise it will appear for any particular search.
• "URL is not on Google": the page is not indexed, and the report gives a reason, such as a noindex tag, a block in robots.txt or a page Google knows about but has not fetched.

Then press Test live URL. The live test fetches the page as it is now, so it shows whether a fix you just made has worked. If the test says the page can be indexed, press Request indexing.

Request it for the home page and your main service pages, not every page. There is a daily limit, asking twice for the same page does not speed anything up, and Google says a request does not mean the page will be indexed. Its help pages say indexing after a request usually takes a day or so, and sometimes a week or two.

What the Page indexing report is telling you

Under Indexing, then Pages, Search Console groups the pages it has not indexed by reason. Some reasons need a fix. Several are Google working as intended, and Google says plainly that it does not expect every page on a site to be indexed. These are the ones a small business site usually shows:

• A reason that mentions noindex: a setting on the page asks Google to leave it out. Fix it if the page should be found. The next section shows where it hides.
• A reason that mentions robots.txt: your robots.txt file tells Google not to fetch the page. Remove the block for pages you want found.
• "Discovered - currently not indexed": Google knows the address but has not fetched it yet. This is common on new sites. Link to the page from your menu or home page and give it time.
• "Crawled - currently not indexed": Google fetched the page and chose to leave it out for now. Google says there is no need to resubmit it. The answer is usually on the page itself, as covered below.
• "Duplicate without user-selected canonical" or "Alternate page with proper canonical tag": Google sees the page as a copy of another one and indexes the other. Usually there is nothing to fix.
• "Page with redirect": the address forwards to another page. That is fine if you meant it to.
• "Not found (404)": the page no longer exists. Fine if you removed it on purpose. If it moved, redirect the old address to the new page.
• "Soft 404": the page looks empty, or like an error message, to Google, while the server says all is well. Give it real content, or let it return a proper 404.
• "Server error (5xx)": your hosting failed when Google called. A few are noise. Many mean a problem to raise with your host.

Look for a setting left on after the build

On a new site, the most common cause is a switch someone turned on to keep drafts out of Google while the site was built, and nobody turned off at launch. It lives in different places:

• WordPress: under Settings, then Reading, a box marked "Discourage search engines from indexing this site". Untick it and save.
• Wix: the SEO settings in the dashboard have a switch that lets search engines index the site, and each page has one of its own.
• Squarespace: a site-wide setting that blocks search engine crawlers, and a "Hide page from search results" option in each page's SEO settings.
• SEO plugins and page builders: a noindex box on each page, easily copied across when a new page starts from a draft.
• robots.txt: the lines User-agent: * and Disallow: / together block the whole site. Open yourdomain.com/robots.txt in a browser to read yours.
• A password, a maintenance mode or a coming soon page that was never switched off.

The live test in URL Inspection tells you which one it is: it says whether indexing is allowed and, if not, whether a noindex tag or robots.txt is the cause. Fix it, run the live test again, then request indexing.

Check this setting on launch day and after every redesign, plugin update or theme change. It takes a minute, and when it is wrong, every page on the site quietly leaves Google. The website launch checklist covers the other launch-day checks.

One trap: do not block a page in robots.txt to keep it out of Google. Google cannot see a noindex tag on a page it is not allowed to fetch, and a blocked page can still be indexed from links elsewhere. For pages you want kept out, use noindex and let Google fetch them.

A new domain needs links and a little time

Google finds new sites mainly by following links from pages it already knows, and from sitemaps. A domain registered last month with nothing pointing at it gives Google little reason to call. Google's own help pages say a new site can take from a few days to a few weeks to be noticed and indexed.

Give Google some routes in:

• Put the website address on your Google Business Profile and on your social media profiles.
• Ask for a link from the trade association or scheme you belong to, and from manufacturers or suppliers that list approved installers or stockists.
• Join the local directories people really use, such as your chamber of commerce. Hundreds of directory submissions are not worth it.
• Link your main service pages from the home page and the menu, so Google reaches them from the page it already knows.

Do not buy links. Google warns that paying for links can break its spam policies, and a cheap batch of them is a common way for a small site to get a problem it did not have before.

Skip any offer to "submit your site to Google" for a fee, too. Submitting is free in Search Console, and Google says it does not accept payment to crawl a site more often or to rank it higher. Most of these offers arrive by email, and our guide to SEO spam emails shows how to check what they claim.

When Google reads a page and leaves it out

When your main service pages show "Crawled - currently not indexed", Google has usually found little on them that it does not already have. A familiar case: a two-van plumbing and heating firm makes forty pages, one per suburb, with the same text and the town name swapped. Google indexes a few and leaves the rest out.

What helps:

• One strong page for each service you really sell: what the job involves, what decides the price, the areas you cover, photos of real jobs and the questions customers ask before they book.
• Merge thin pages that say the same thing, and redirect their old addresses to the page that replaces them.
• Put the words on the page as text. Google's own advice is to use text rather than relying on images or video, and a price list inside a photo is hard for it to read.
• Make sure the page opens without a login and works on a phone.

If you plan many similar pages, read our guide on AI content and Google first. Google's spam policy on scaled content is about what the pages offer, however they were written.

After a redesign or a change of domain

A site that was on Google and dropped out after a rebuild usually has one of these problems:

• Old page addresses now show an error, because nobody set up redirects. Every old address that changed needs a permanent redirect to the page that replaced it.
• The new site still carries the noindex setting from its preview.
• Two versions are live, such as with and without www, and neither forwards to the other. Pick one and redirect the rest to it.
• The preview copy got indexed instead of the live site, or the live pages name the preview address as their canonical.
• The domain changed. Redirect every old address, then tell Google with the change of address tool in Search Console, on the old domain's property.

Our website redesign page shows how we map every old address before launch and check Search Console after it.

Indexed, but not where customers look

If the site: search lists your pages and you still cannot find yourself for "electrician near me", Google has your site and ranks others above it. That is a different job from indexing.

For searches with a place in them, the map results come from Google Business Profiles and usually sit above the websites. Google says it ranks them on relevance (how well the profile matches the search), distance (how far the business is from the person searching) and prominence (how well known it is, which includes its reviews and the links to it). It also says there is no way to pay for a better local ranking.

Your own searches are a poor test, because Google tailors results to the searcher's location, language and device. Search Console's Performance report covers everyone: it lists the searches you already appear for, how often and in what position. A page that shows up often in position 15 for the right search is close. Improve that page before you write new ones.

For the map, start with your Google Business Profile. For the website itself, what a small business website needs covers the pages and details that help.

The rare causes: a penalty, a hack or a blocked server

These are uncommon on small business sites. Each one shows in Search Console:

• Manual actions: a reviewer at Google found the site breaking a spam policy, often because of bought links or copied content, and some or all of the site can drop out of results. The report says what was found. Fix it everywhere, then request a review in the same report.
• Security issues: the site has been hacked or is serving harmful software. Clean it, close the way in, which is often an old plugin or a weak password, then request a review.
• Blocked servers: a firewall or security plugin that turns Googlebot away shows up as 403 or server errors in the Page indexing report. Your host can check its logs.

If one of these appears, it is worth paying for help. Most of the other causes in this guide are a settings change you can make yourself.

Pages that should stay out of Google

Not every missing page is a problem. These should be kept out on purpose:

• Thank-you pages shown after a form is sent. Nobody should land on one from a search.
• Landing pages made for a single ad campaign. We keep ours out of search results, where they would compete with your main pages. More on landing pages for ads.
• Preview and staging copies of the site.
• Login, account and basket pages, and the results pages of your site's own search.

If Search Console lists these under a noindex reason, the setting is doing its job.

The order to work in

Work down this list and stop when you find the cause:

• Search your business name and town, then site:yourdomain.com.
• Set up Search Console as a Domain property, in the business's name.
• Submit the sitemap.
• Inspect the home page and run the live test.
• Remove any noindex, robots.txt block or password from pages you want found.
• Request indexing for the home page and your main service pages.
• Add the website address to your Business Profile and social media profiles.
• Look at the Page indexing report once a week for the next month.
• Then open the Performance report and see which searches you appear for.

Every website we build launches with Search Console set up in your account and the sitemap submitted, and in the weeks after launch we check it for pages Google could not index. See websites for what else a build includes.