What to check when your website is not showing up on Google

You type your business name into Google, maybe from the counter of a shop in Hialeah or from the van outside a job in Bolton, and your own website is missing. A directory listing shows up, maybe a review site or a company with a similar name, but the site you paid for is nowhere on the first page, or it sits well below things you've never heard of. Most owners assume this means they need to "do SEO" and start spending money before checking the basics. In our experience the cause is usually plainer than that, and a website not showing up on Google can often be traced in an afternoon if you check things in the right order. Here is the order we use.

Is your website not showing up on Google at all, or just buried?

There are two different problems that look the same when you search your name, and the fix depends on which one you have. If your site isn't indexed, Google hasn't stored your pages, so they can't appear for any search. If it's indexed but ranking low, Google knows the pages exist and is choosing to show other results above them.

To tell them apart, open Google and type site: followed by your domain, with no space and without the "https" or "www" part, for example site:yourbusiness.com. Then look at what comes back.

• A list of your pages (home, services, contact) means you're indexed. You can move on to the sections about titles and ranking.
• A message that your search did not match any documents means Google has none of your pages. Work through the next two sections first.
• Only one or two pages, or old pages that no longer exist, usually means Google found the site once and hasn't come back properly since, which the sitemap step below helps with.
• A strange address, such as a test copy your developer used while building, means the wrong version of the site got indexed, and your developer should redirect it to the real one.

Look for a setting that hides the site from search engines

This is the most common cause we see after a new site goes live. While building, developers often switch on an option that tells search engines to stay away, so half-finished pages don't get picked up. Then launch day comes and nobody switches it off again.

Where to look depends on how your site was built:

• On WordPress, log in, go to Settings, then Reading, and find the box labeled "Discourage search engines from indexing this site." It should be unchecked. If it's ticked, untick it and save.
• On hosted site builders, look in the site's SEO or visibility settings for anything like "hide from search engines," and check that a password or "coming soon" mode isn't still switched on.
• The robots.txt file is a short text file that tells search engines which parts of a site to skip. Type yourbusiness.com/robots.txt into your browser. If you see User-agent: * followed by Disallow: /, that line blocks the whole site, and whoever manages your hosting should change it.
• A "noindex" tag is a hidden instruction inside an individual page. You won't see it on screen, but the Search Console check in the next section will flag those pages as "Excluded by 'noindex' tag."

If you fix one of these, don't expect a change the same day. Google has to visit the site again before anything moves, and the next step is how you ask it to.

Submit a sitemap through Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free tool from Google that shows how Google sees your site. It's the one place where Google tells you directly which pages it has and why it skipped the others, so it's worth setting up even if nothing seems wrong.

1. Go to search.google.com/search-console and sign in with the Google account you use for the business.
2. Add your site. The "Domain" option covers every version of your address and is verified by adding a short record at the company where you bought your domain. If that feels like too much, the "URL prefix" option lets you verify through your website instead.
3. Find your sitemap, which is a file listing your pages. Most sites have one at yourbusiness.com/sitemap.xml or yourbusiness.com/sitemap_index.xml. Open it in your browser to confirm it loads.
4. In Search Console, open Sitemaps, paste the sitemap address and press Submit. A good result is a status of "Success" with a count of discovered pages that roughly matches the number of pages on your site.

After that, paste your homepage address into the search bar at the top of Search Console. If it reports that the URL is not on Google, click "Request indexing," and do the same for your main service pages. Over the following days the Pages report will list which pages are indexed and give a reason for each one that isn't, such as a noindex tag or a duplicate page.

Check your page titles and business name

Once Google has your pages, it has to understand that they belong to your business. The page title, which is the clickable blue line in search results and the text on your browser tab, does much of that work. We regularly find homepages titled "Home" or carrying the name of the website template, which tells Google almost nothing.

A clear homepage title puts your business name first and then what you do and where, for example "Your Business Name | Roof Repair in Stockport" or "Your Business Name | Pool Service in Boca Raton." Each service page should have its own title describing that service, so the pages aren't all competing on the same words.

Then check the business name itself:

• It should appear as real text on the homepage, ideally in a heading and in the footer. If it only appears inside the logo image, Google may miss it, because it reads text far more reliably than pictures.
• It should be written the same way on your site, your Google Business Profile, your social accounts and local directories. An ampersand in one place and "and" in another, or a word dropped from some listings, makes it harder for Google to connect them.
• Your address and phone number in the footer, written as text, help Google tie the site to a real place. Pick one form of the address and keep it: a shop in Kendall that appears as "Miami" on some listings and "Kendall" on others, or a Greater Manchester business on one of the many Manchester Roads in different boroughs with no town given, leaves Google guessing.
• If your name is made of common words, searching it will bring up other businesses with the same words. Names built around "Coastal" or "Sunshine" in Florida, or "Pennine" or "Northern" around Manchester, run into this all the time, and adding your town to the search (and to your titles) is a fairer test.

New sites, and sites that are indexed but low

If your site or domain is new, some of this is simply time. Google can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks to index a new site, and longer for a brand-new domain that no other sites point to yet. Nobody can promise a date, Google included, so be wary of anyone who does.

If you moved from an old address, make sure every old page redirects to its new equivalent. Without redirects, Google treats the new site as a stranger and the old one as broken, and you lose whatever standing the old address had.

If the site: search shows your pages but searching your name still puts directories and social profiles above you, you're in the second situation. Search engines lean on signals from outside your site to decide how much to trust it, so the work shifts outward:

• Set up or claim your Google Business Profile and link it to your website. For a name search, it's often the first thing people see.
• Get listed, with matching details, on the local directories and trade associations that apply to your business, such as the chamber of commerce for your city in Broward or Palm Beach County, or for your borough in Greater Manchester.
• Ask suppliers and partners you already work with to link to your site where it makes sense.
• Add pages that describe each service you offer and the areas you cover, written for customers. A site with only a homepage gives Google very little to work with.

Even with all of this done well, how high you rank depends partly on what competitors are doing, and that's outside anyone's control. What you can control is that Google can find the site and clearly connect it to your business.

How Pixedi handles this in the Presence plan

In our Presence plan, $1,400 a month, this is part of the routine: we check that the site is indexed and nothing is blocking it, and we fix titles and listings so the business name matches everywhere. We also manage the Google Business Profile and local search listings, and the one-page monthly report shows what we did and what changed, in numbers. We don't promise rankings, because nobody honestly can.

Before anything else, type site: followed by your domain into Google today and write down what comes back. If nothing appears, open your site's search settings and your robots.txt file next; if your pages do appear, open your homepage and read the title on the browser tab. Those two checks tell you which half of this guide applies to you.

Sources

1. Google Search Console
2. Google Search Central: Build and submit a sitemap
3. Google Search Central: Block search indexing with noindex

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