Why is my website not showing up on Google?

There are only three possibilities, and they need completely different fixes. Google has not found the site, Google has found it and chosen not to index it, or it is indexed and ranking too low to see. Work out which before changing anything.

The thirty-second test

Search Google for site:yourdomain.com, with no space after the colon. Whatever comes back is what Google has indexed.

No results means you are not indexed at all — a different problem, and a more fixable one, than ranking badly. Results means you are indexed and the question is really about position.

If nothing comes back

Something is preventing indexing. In rough order of how often it turns out to be each:

• The site is new. Indexing takes days to weeks, and there is nothing to fix.
• A noindex tag is on the pages, often left behind by a developer or a staging setting.
• robots.txt is blocking crawlers, which happens when a staging configuration reaches production.
• No links point at the site anywhere, and no sitemap has been submitted, so nothing has led Google to it.
• The site needs JavaScript to show any content at all, which makes indexing slower and less reliable.

If it is indexed but nobody finds it

Then it is a ranking question, and the honest answer is usually that you rank for your business name and nothing else. Searching your own name and finding yourself proves very little — you would have to rank badly to fail that.

The useful question is what you rank for that a stranger might type. Search Console answers that, and it is free.

What to do first

Verify the site in Google Search Console and submit a sitemap. That takes ten minutes and rules out most of the causes above.

Then check the basics on the page itself — a title, a description, one H1, working structured data. Our free SEO check does that in a second, and none of it requires an account.

Find what is costing you search clicks, then watch the fix work.

VisitorPing reads your own Search Console data for the pages losing clicks, then rings your phone the moment someone lands on your website.

Start Free Trial See how it works

The thirty-second test

Search Google for site:yourdomain.com, with no space after the colon. Whatever comes back is what Google has indexed.

No results means you are not indexed at all — a different problem, and a more fixable one, than ranking badly. Results means you are indexed and the question is really about position.

If nothing comes back

Something is preventing indexing. In rough order of how often it turns out to be each:

• The site is new. Indexing takes days to weeks, and there is nothing to fix.

• A noindex tag is on the pages, often left behind by a developer or a staging setting.

• robots.txt is blocking crawlers, which happens when a staging configuration reaches production.

• No links point at the site anywhere, and no sitemap has been submitted, so nothing has led Google to it.

• The site needs JavaScript to show any content at all, which makes indexing slower and less reliable.

If it is indexed but nobody finds it

The useful question is what you rank for that a stranger might type. Search Console answers that, and it is free.

What to do first

Verify the site in Google Search Console and submit a sitemap. That takes ten minutes and rules out most of the causes above.

Then check the basics on the page itself — a title, a description, one H1, working structured data. Our free SEO check does that in a second, and none of it requires an account.