Your website might not appear in Google because it hasn’t been indexed yet
Use Google Search Console’s URL Inspection tool to check whether Google has found and indexed your pages
Common causes include noindex tags, robots.txt blocking, slow site speed, and missing XML sitemaps
WordPress sites should check RankMath SEO or similar plugin settings for accidental blocking
A lot of indexing problems are fixable yourself, but persistent issues may need professional technical SEO help
You’ve built your website. You’ve added your services, written your about page, and everything looks perfect when you visit it in your browser.
But when you search for your business name on Google, nothing appears.
Your website is invisible.
This is genuinely frustrating, especially when you’ve invested time and money into your online presence.
Research analysing 16 million pages found that 62% of web pages are not indexed by Google, so you’re not alone in facing this problem.
The good news? Most reasons why websites don’t show in Google are fixable.
This guide explains the common indexing problems that stop websites appearing in search results and walks you through how to check and fix each one.
Table of Contents
How Does Google Find and Store Websites?
Google uses automated programs called ‘crawlers’ to discover web pages by following links across the internet. When a crawler visits your site, it downloads your content. This is called crawling.
Next comes indexing. Google analyses the crawled content to understand what each page is about. If it meets Google’s quality standards, the page gets added to the index, which is Google’s searchable database of web pages.
When someone searches on Google, they’re searching this index, not the live internet. If your page isn’t in the index, it cannot appear in search results.
What Does It Mean When Your Website Is Not Showing in Google?
Before troubleshooting, you need to understand what “not showing in Google” actually means.
There are two distinct situations, and the fix depends on which one applies to you.
Your Website Is ‘Not Indexed’
If Google hasn’t visited and indexed your website, your pages are not stored in Google’s searchable database. Google’s index contains information on hundreds of billions of web pages, and only pages within this index can appear in search results.
This situation is quite common for brand new websites or pages you’ve recently published.
Google discovers websites by following links from other sites and by crawling URLs you submit through Search Console.
Once Google’s crawlers visit your pages, they assess the content and decide whether to add it to their index of pages. Only indexed pages can appear in search results, so if you’re not indexed, you’re invisible regardless of how good your content is.
Your Website Is Indexed But Not Ranking
The other issue is that your website might be in Google’s index but ranking so low that you can’t find it. If your business appears on page 10 or beyond, you won’t see it when searching normally.
This is actually a different problem entirely.
Indexing is about Google knowing your site exists. Ranking is about where Google positions your site compared to competitors. This article focuses on indexing problems, though some fixes help with both issues.
How Do You Check If Google Has Indexed Your Website?
You can check whether Google has indexed your website in about thirty seconds using a simple search command.
The Site Search Method
Type site:yourdomainname.co.uk into Google’s search bar, replacing the example (yourdomainname.co.uk) with your actual domain.
If Google returns a list of pages from your website, your site is indexed. If Google shows “Your search did not match any documents”, your site isn’t in the index.
For example, searching site:respectexperts.co.uk would show all indexed pages from that domain. Try it with your own website right now.
Using Google Search Console
Google Search Console is super useful, free, and gives you far more detail about your indexing status. If you haven’t set this up yet, creating an account should be your first priority.
It’s free and takes about ten minutes.
Once verified, the Index Coverage report shows exactly which pages Google has indexed and which ones it has excluded.
According to Google’s documentation, the URL Inspection tool provides detailed crawl, index, and serving information about your pages, directly from the Google index.
The URL Inspection tool lets you check individual pages and see precisely why they might not be appearing. This is far more useful than the site search method because it tells you the reason behind any problems, not just that a problem exists.
How to Use Google Search Console: A Guide for Business Owners
What Are the Most Common Reasons Your Website Is Not Showing Up on Google?
Several issues can prevent Google from finding or indexing your website. Here are the most frequent causes for UK small business websites.
Your Website Is Brand New
Google doesn’t index new websites instantly.
It can take several hours to several weeks for new content to be indexed… there’s no guarantee Google will index any particular page.
John Mueller, Google Search Advocate
The process involves discovering your site, crawling your pages, processing the content, and adding it to the index. According to Google’s John Mueller, this can take “several hours to several weeks” depending on your site’s quality and technical setup. Research data shows the average page takes 27 days to be indexed, with 65% of pages indexed within the first 30 days.
For completely new domains with no existing links from other websites, indexing can take longer because Google has no way to discover your site naturally.
Think of it like opening a new shop on a street with no signs pointing to it.
Submitting your sitemap through Search Console speeds this up considerably because you’re telling Google directly that your site exists.
XML Sitemaps: What They Are and How They Help SEO
Your Robots.txt File Is Blocking Google
The robots.txt file is a text document that tells search engine crawlers which of your website pages they can and cannot access. If this file contains instructions that block Googlebot, your pages won’t be crawled or indexed.
A common mistake happens during website development.
Developers often add a “Disallow: /” instruction to prevent search engines indexing a site while it’s being built. If nobody removes this when the site goes live, your finished website stays invisible to Google!
I’ve seen this happen to countless UK businesses who paid for a website but never checked whether developers removed the blocking instruction.
You can check your robots.txt file by visiting yourdomain.co.uk/robots.txt in your browser. Look for any Disallow instructions that might be blocking important pages.
Pages Have Noindex Tags
A ‘noindex meta tag’ tells Google specifically not to index and show a page. This is useful for pages you don’t want in search results, like thank-you pages after form submissions or internal admin pages.
The real problem occurs when noindex tags get applied accidentally to pages you do want indexed.
In WordPress, this commonly happens through SEO plugin settings. Yoast SEO and Rank Math both have options to noindex pages, and these settings sometimes get changed without you realising.
One misclick during a plugin update or theme change can make your entire site invisible.
Check individual pages by viewing the page source code in your browser (right-click, then “View Page Source”) and searching for “noindex”. In WordPress, check your SEO plugin settings for each important page to ensure they’re set to be indexable.
How to Set Up Your WordPress SEO Plugin for Maximum Results
You Haven’t Submitted an XML Sitemap
An XML sitemap is a specially formatted file that lists all the pages on your website you want search engines to find.
While Google can discover pages through crawling, submitting a sitemap helps Google find your content faster and understand your site structure.
Most WordPress sites generate sitemaps automatically through SEO plugins.
The typical location is yourdomain.co.uk/sitemap_index.xml or yourdomain.co.uk/sitemap.xml. You need to submit this URL through Search Console under the Sitemaps section.
After submitting, Search Console will show you whether Google successfully processed your sitemap and how many URLs it found. Give it a few days, and if the numbers don’t match what you expect, that’s a sign something needs investigating.
XML Sitemaps: What They Are and How They Help SEO
Your Website Has Technical Problems
Several technical issues can prevent Google from properly crawling and indexing your site.
Slow page speed makes it harder for Google to crawl your site efficiently. Google allocates a “crawl budget” to each website. If your pages load slowly, fewer pages get crawled in each visit. For a small business site with 20 pages, this might not matter much.
For a larger site, it can mean important pages never get indexed.
Server errors (showing as 5xx status codes) tell Google your site is unreliable. Frequent server problems can cause Google to crawl less often or even remove pages from the index entirely.
Broken internal links waste crawl budget and prevent Google from discovering pages that aren’t linked properly.
Mobile usability problems matter because Google completed its switch to mobile-first indexing in 2024. This means Google now uses the mobile version of your site for indexing and ranking. If your site doesn’t work properly on mobile devices, Google may struggle to index it correctly.
If your site doesn’t work properly on mobile devices, Google may struggle to prioritise it and index it correctly.
What Is Technical SEO? A Guide for Business Owners
Your Content Has Quality Issues
Google doesn’t index every page it finds.
If your pages have very thin content (100-250 words), duplicate content that exists elsewhere, or content that Google considers low quality, those pages may be excluded from the index.
This is particularly relevant for UK small business websites that sometimes launch with placeholder content or pages with minimal text.
Each page needs enough unique, useful content to justify its place in Google’s index.
How Do You Fix Website Indexing Problems?
Once you’ve identified why your website isn’t showing in Google, you can take specific steps to fix it.
Set Up Google Search Console Properly
If you haven’t done this already, create a Search Console account and verify ownership of your website. Google offers several verification methods including adding an HTML file to your site, adding a DNS record, or using your Google Analytics code.
The DNS method is often simplest if you have access to your domain settings.
Once verified, submit your XML sitemap and use the URL Inspection tool to check specific pages. If a page isn’t indexed, the tool will tell you why and often suggest how to fix it.
(We recommend that all sites are added to Google Search Console)
Request Indexing for Important Pages
Search Console’s URL Inspection tool includes a “Request Indexing” button.
After fixing any problems with a certain page, use this to tell Google to recrawl it. This is faster than waiting for Google to discover the change naturally.
Be aware that requesting indexing doesn’t guarantee immediate results.
Google will add your request to a queue, and actual indexing might take hours to days depending on various factors. Don’t keep clicking the button repeatedly; once is enough.
Check and Fix WordPress SEO Settings
For WordPress sites, check your SEO plugin settings carefully. In Yoast SEO, look at the Advanced section on each page and post to confirm the Robots Meta setting allows indexing.
Also check Settings > Search Appearance to ensure your post types and taxonomies are set to show in search results.
Additionally, go to Settings > Reading in WordPress itself and confirm that “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” is NOT ticked.
This setting sometimes gets left on after development, especially if your developer used a staging site.
Improve Your Site Speed
Test your website speed using Google PageSpeed Insights. This free tool measures your Core Web Vitals scores and provides specific recommendations for improvement.
Common fixes include optimising images (using WebP format and appropriate sizes), enabling browser caching, reducing server response time, and minimising render-blocking resources. Google recommends aiming for a Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) of 2.5 seconds or less for a good user experience.
Your hosting provider significantly affects site speed. If you’re on cheap shared hosting and your site loads slowly, upgrading might be the most effective single change you can make.
How to Speed Up Your WordPress Site
Build Links to Help Google Discover Your Site
If your website is completely new with no external links, Google has limited ways to find it.
Getting links from other websites, even simple ones from your social media profiles or business directory listings, helps Google discover your site.
For UK businesses, submitting to relevant local directories, industry associations, and creating a Google Business Profile all create links that help with discovery.
Focus on legitimate, relevant sources. A listing on Yell.com or your local Chamber of Commerce website is worth far more than dozens of spammy directory links.
When Should You Get Professional Technical SEO Help?
Most indexing problems described here are fixable yourself with patience and attention to detail. However, some situations benefit from professional assistance.
Consider getting help if:
- Your website has been live for more than three months but still shows no indexed pages
- You’ve tried the fixes above without improvement
- Your site has complex technical requirements (multiple languages, large product catalogues, membership areas)
- Search Console shows errors you don’t understand
- You simply don’t have time to investigate properly yourself
A professional technical SEO audit can identify problems you might miss and provide a report with a prioritised action plan. This is particularly valuable if your website is important to your business revenue and you need issues resolved quickly rather than spending weeks troubleshooting.
Frequently Asked Questions
Google can index new pages within a few days, but research shows the average is 27 days. About 14% of pages are indexed within the first week, while 65% are indexed within 30 days. Sites with no existing backlinks may take longer because Google has fewer ways to discover them. Submitting your sitemap through Search Console and requesting indexing speeds things up, though you’ll still need patience.
If your site is indexed but not appearing for your business name, you have a ranking problem rather than an indexing problem. This usually means your site lacks authority or optimisation compared to other results. Check that your business name appears in your homepage title tag and content, and ensure you have a Google Business Profile set up and linked to your website.
No, Google doesn’t offer paid faster indexing. The only legitimate ways to speed up indexing are submitting your sitemap through Search Console, using the URL Inspection tool to request indexing, and ensuring your site has no technical problems blocking crawlers.
Crawling is when Google’s bots visit your website and download your page content. Indexing is when Google processes that content and adds it to their searchable database. A page must be crawled before it can be indexed, but being crawled doesn’t guarantee indexing. Google may choose not to index pages it considers low quality, duplicate, or not useful to searchers.
This status means Google found your URL but decided not to crawl and index it yet. Common reasons include Google considering the page lower priority, server overload preventing efficient crawling, or content quality concerns. You can try requesting indexing manually, but also review whether the page genuinely offers unique, valuable content worth indexing.
SEO plugins like Yoast and Rank Math automatically generate sitemaps and notify search engines when you publish new content. This is helpful and sufficient for most websites. Additional indexing plugins that promise instant indexing rarely provide significant benefits, and some use methods Google discourages. Stick with reputable SEO plugins and manual submissions through Search Console.
A previously indexed site disappearing from Google usually indicates a technical problem, a manual action (penalty), or accidentally blocking search engines. Research shows approximately 21% of indexed pages eventually get deindexed, often within the first 90 days. Check Search Console for any manual action notifications, verify your robots.txt and noindex settings haven’t changed, and check for any recent website updates that might have caused issues. Server problems or hosting changes are common culprits.
Related: WordPress Hosting for Small Business: What to Look For
Google doesn’t publish specific limits, but they allocate crawl budget based on your site’s authority and technical health. For small business websites with a hundred or so pages, this is rarely a concern. Sites with thousands of pages need to think more carefully about which pages deserve indexing and ensuring crawl budget is spent efficiently on your most important content.
This means Google visited your page but decided not to add it to the index. Google may have found the content too thin, too similar to other pages, or simply not valuable enough to include. Review the page content, ensure it offers something unique and useful, and consider whether it genuinely deserves to be a standalone indexed page or should be merged with related content.
Yes, extremely slow and unreliable hosting can affect indexing. If your server responds slowly or times out frequently, Google’s crawlers may give up before fully accessing your pages. This reduces how efficiently Google can crawl your site, potentially leaving some pages undiscovered or unindexed. Check your server response times in Search Console and consider upgrading hosting if you see consistent timeout errors.