Website not showing up on Google?
Sixteen causes, ranked — with checks you can run yourself.
Do one thing first: search site:yourdomain.com on Google. No results means your site isn't in the index at all; your pages coming back means it's a ranking problem. Everything below starts from that one query — sixteen causes, ranked by how often each turns out to be the culprit.
The mechanical causes — noindex, robots.txt, sitemap, canonicals — are exactly what our audit scans for, page by page.
Which of the two problems do you have?
site:yourdomain.com — your actual domain, no spaces. That one query splits the problem in half. No results: your site isn't in Google's index at all, and one of causes 1–11 is why — the checks below usually find it inside two minutes. Your pages come back: you're indexed; what's failing is the match between what you typed and what Google currently believes your pages deserve. That's causes 12–16. You're not invisible — you're losing a competition you can actually see.
The two-minute diagnosis
Three checks anyone can run, in this order. Together they rule out — or rule in — most of the 16 causes before you touch anything technical.
1 · The site: search
Search site:yourdomain.com on Google. It asks: "show me everything you have filed under this domain." It's the single most informative query a site owner can run.
2 · Your exact brand name
Search your exact business name — the one on your invoices. A working site ranks for its own name almost immediately, because nobody else competes for it.
3 · Search Console's answer key
Google Search Console is Google's free dashboard for your site. Its "Page indexing" report doesn't make you guess — it labels each page with why it's excluded, by name.
Six reasons Google can't find your site
If site: returned nothing, work down this list — ranked by how often each turns out to be the culprit. Every check takes minutes and needs no tools.
Your site is brand new
The most common "not on Google" of all — and nothing is broken. Google learns about new sites by crawling, and a brand-new domain with no inbound links can wait days to a few weeks for its first visit.
The fix: claim the site in Google Search Console and hit "Request indexing" on the homepage — and get one real link from anywhere (a client, a directory, a social profile).
Nothing on the web links to you
Google's crawler discovers pages overwhelmingly by following links. A site that nothing anywhere points to may simply never be reached — being live is not the same as being reachable.
The fix: one genuine link is enough to get crawled — suppliers, clients, local directories, your LinkedIn company page.
No sitemap — or Google doesn't know it
A sitemap.xml file is your site's table of contents for crawlers. Without one, discovery depends entirely on links and luck; with one, you've handed Google the full list.
yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml — does a file actually load? Most platforms generate one automatically.The fix: if it's missing, turn it on in your platform settings, reference it in robots.txt, and submit it in Search Console.
robots.txt is telling Google to stay out
robots.txt is the file that tells crawlers where they may go. A leftover Disallow: / — very often set to keep a development site private, then forgotten on launch day — blocks the entire site from every crawler.
yourdomain.com/robots.txt. "User-agent: *" followed by "Disallow: /" means the whole site is blocked.The fix: delete the Disallow line (keep the Sitemap line). Google re-reads this file within days.
Your pages are marked "noindex"
A noindex tag is a note in a page's code that says "never show this page in search results." WordPress, Wix and Squarespace all ship a checkbox that sets it site-wide. It's the classic cause of a site that launched invisible — and of a site that ranked for months, then vanished after someone ticked a box.
noindex.The fix: untick the visibility box (WordPress: Settings → Reading; Wix and Squarespace: site settings). Pages usually return within days to weeks.
Your server was down when Google called
If hosting errors out or times out when Googlebot knocks, pages drop out of the index — and repeated failures can drop a whole site. Chronic slowness does the same job, slowly.
The fix: stabilise the hosting or fix the errors; once Googlebot consistently gets a normal response, pages come back.
Five reasons Google found you — and left you out
The crawler arrived, read the page, and declined to index it. These causes are invisible unless you know where to look, and Search Console's Page indexing report names most of them outright.
A manual action or security penalty
Google delists sites that break its rules — spam techniques, or a hack that quietly turned the site into a link farm or a malware host. Rare, but rule it out first: nothing else matters until it's cleared.
The fix: fix the underlying problem (or hire someone to), then file a reconsideration request from the same screen.
Not the same thing: the browser's "Not secure" label isn't a Google penalty — it's a missing or broken certificate; our not-secure guide covers it separately.
Canonical tags pointing at the wrong URL
A canonical tag tells Google "this page is a copy; the original lives over there." One misconfigured template value can point every page at the homepage — politely asking Google to keep one page and throw the rest away.
rel="canonical". Each page should point at its own address.The fix: correct the template so every page canonicalises to itself — one consistent https, www-or-not version.
Duplicate or near-duplicate content
When the same text is reachable at several URLs — print versions, filter combinations, syndicated product copy — Google picks one and ignores the rest. If it picks the variant you never check, "your" page isn't the one showing.
The fix: consolidate the duplicates, canonicalise the variants, rewrite the boilerplate.
Thin content
Pages with almost nothing unique on them — empty category pages, one-line tag archives, placeholder "coming soon" pages — get crawled and deliberately passed over. Enough of them, and the whole site gets crawled less often.
The fix: flesh out the pages that matter; merge or remove the ones that don't.
Your content only exists after JavaScript runs
Google reads the raw HTML first and renders scripts later — sometimes much later, sometimes never. If your text, links, or entire pages only appear once scripts execute, Google may literally have never seen them.
The fix: serve the content in the HTML itself; scripts should enhance the words, not carry them.
Five times the site isn't missing — the search is
site: returned your pages, so you're indexed. What's failing is the match between the words you typed and what Google believes your pages deserve. This happens constantly, and it isn't always bad news.
You searched a head term, not your name
A new pizzeria searching for "pizza" is competing with national delivery platforms and decades of accumulated links. For generic one-word terms, not appearing is the default state of the internet — not a fault in your site.
The fix: target realistic phrases — what you offer plus where or for whom ("deep dish pizza Portsmouth") — and give it time.
Personalization and location
Google reshuffles results by country, language, device and your own search history. You may be looking at a different results page than your customers — and concluding you're absent when you're page two somewhere else.
The fix: none needed on the site — just judge visibility from clean searches.
Your domain has no authority yet
Indexing is free; ranking is competitive. For any phrase other sites genuinely want, Google weighs links and reputation — and a new or low-link site sits pages deep until it earns some. This is the honest answer behind most "we're on page seven" cases.
The fix: earn links the slow way — customers, suppliers, local press, directories. Time and real references.
Only your homepage shows
Homepages collect the most links and get crawled most. Pages buried several clicks deep — or reachable only through a search box or a dropdown — can go entirely unseen, which is why "my site is on Google" and "my pages are on Google" are different claims.
site:yourdomain.com and count. Just the homepage, or a suspiciously small slice of the site?The fix: link the important pages directly from the menu or homepage, and list every one in the sitemap.
Google indexed a different version of your URL
http vs https, www vs no-www: four different addresses can serve the same site. Google may have indexed the variant you never check — or, worse, two variants splitting the credit between them.
The fix: redirect (301) every variant to one canonical form, and use that form everywhere — sitemap, canonicals, internal links.
Checklist: what you see → what it means
The whole guide, compressed. Run these checks in order; each result points at a numbered cause.
| Check | If you see… | It points to |
|---|---|---|
site:yourdomain.com on Google |
No results at all | Not indexed — causes 1–11; start with 4 and 5, they hide in plain sight |
site:yourdomain.com on Google |
Your pages listed | You're indexed — it's a ranking or expectation gap, causes 12–16 |
| Your exact brand name | Not even your name finds you | Something is actively keeping you out — causes 4, 5 or 7 |
yourdomain.com/robots.txt |
"Disallow: /" | Cause 4 — the whole site is blocked from crawlers |
View page source → search noindex |
Found, on any page | Cause 5 — the page asks never to be shown in results |
| Search Console → Page indexing | Named exclusions per page | Google labelling the cause for you — match it to 3, 5, 8, 9 or 10 |
Every check above is free and takes under a minute. If all six come back clean and the site still doesn't show, the remaining suspects are 1, 6 and 14 — a new site, flaky hosting, or a domain with no references yet.
What the £7.99 report checks — and what it can't
Most of the 16 causes are mechanical, and mechanical is checkable. Full disclosure: some aren't, and we say which. The report is the full 21-category audit — what it costs and how it compares to doing it yourself are on their own pages.
The mechanical causes
Checked page by page across up to 25 pages, ranked by what each is costing you, with fix guidance.
- robots.txt blocks and crawler directives (4)
- noindex tags on any page (5)
- Sitemap presence, reachability, validity (3)
- Canonical tags pointing the wrong way (8)
- Duplicate and thin pages, site-wide (9, 10)
- Server errors, redirect chains, URL variants (6, 16)
- JavaScript-dependent content and machine-readability (11)
- Pages buried too deep for crawlers to find (2, 15)
— Not ours to claim
What no report sold from outside your Google account can do:
- See inside Search Console — indexing status, manual actions and security issues live behind your login (7 + the diagnosis); the report names the exact screen to open
- Make Google index you faster — nobody can pay for that; the fixes remove the blockers, the crawl does the rest
- Build your authority or choose your keywords for you (12, 14) — that's strategy; the report shows where you stand
Also honest: if the cause turns out to be 1 — a new site — the fix is mostly time. The report still tells you everything else worth fixing while the clock runs, so the site that does get indexed is a good one.
Fair questions, straight answers
How long does a new website take to show up on Google?
Usually days. A few weeks for a brand-new domain with no links is normal and isn't a fault — but it has a limit: if it's been over a month, stop waiting and check causes 3, 4 and 5. Sitemap, robots.txt and a stray noindex tag together explain most "a month later, still nothing" cases.
Will the £7.99 report tell me why my site isn't on Google?
For the mechanical causes — yes, checked page by page: robots.txt blocks, noindex tags, sitemap problems, canonical tags, duplicate and thin pages, server errors, URL variants, JavaScript-locked content. What it can't see is inside your Google account (Search Console's indexing status, manual actions); for those, the report names exactly which screen to open and what to look for. Judge the sample report before you buy.
site: shows my pages — so why don't I appear when customers search?
Because indexed and ranked are different things. Being in the index means Google has filed your pages; appearing for a competitive search means outranking everyone else who wants that phrase. That's causes 12–16: usually realistic keywords, accumulated authority, and time.
How much is not being on Google costing me?
For most businesses, search is where buying journeys start — and assistants like ChatGPT draw on what they can read of your site too. A noindex tag or a robots.txt block costs you every single day it stays. Finding it is cheap; not knowing is the expensive part.
Find out which of the 16 it is.
Enter your URL and pay securely — your report PDF lands in your inbox in ~30 minutes,
with every mechanical cause from this guide checked page by page.