Why your website isn’t showing up on Google (and how to find out in 10 minutes)

Your site has been live for weeks, you search for your business name and nothing comes up. Or it does, but only if you type the exact name. It’s one of the most frustrating situations, and it almost always has a specific cause. Here’s how to find it.

Is your site indexed?

The first step is finding out whether Google knows your site. Two quick ways:

• search Google for site:yourdomain.com (no spaces): if no results appear, the site isn’t indexed;
• use Google Search Console, Google’s free tool for site owners: the Page indexing report shows which pages are in the index and why the others aren’t.

If the site is indexed but you can’t find it when searching for your services, the problem isn’t technical but about ranking: skip to the section on content.

The most common technical causes

1. A forgotten "noindex" tag. Many sites under construction are hidden from Google with this instruction, which sometimes stays on after launch. Search Console flags it as "Excluded by ‘noindex’ tag."
2. A block in robots.txt. The file that tells search engines where they may go can, by mistake, shut out the whole site.
3. Pages discovered but not crawled. The status "Discovered – currently not indexed" means Google knows the page but hasn’t visited it yet, sometimes because the server seemed overloaded.
4. Pages crawled but not indexed. "Crawled – currently not indexed" means Google has seen the page and decided not to include it for now: it’s often a signal about the quality or originality of the content.
5. A new site with no links. If no page points to your site and you haven’t submitted a sitemap, Google can take a while to find it.
6. Duplicate pages. Versions with and without "www," with and without "https," or text copied between pages confuse indexing.

How to fix it, step by step

1. Verify the site in Search Console and submit the sitemap (usually found at yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml).
2. Open the Page indexing report and read why your important pages are excluded.
3. Use the URL Inspection tool on the home page and key pages: it tells you whether the page can be indexed and what Google sees.
4. Fix the cause (noindex, robots.txt, redirects, duplicates), then request indexing again.
5. Wait: a new crawl can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks.

The site is indexed but doesn’t rank: why?

This is where content and competition come in. The questions to ask:

• Do your pages answer what clients are looking for? If they search "accountant for freelancers in Austin" and your site only says "full-service consulting," Google has no reason to show you.
• Does every service have its own page? A single page that covers everything competes poorly on every search.
• Is the site fast on phones? Performance is part of page experience: read slow website and Core Web Vitals.
• Do you serve a local area? Then your Google profile matters too: see local SEO.

When does it make sense to rebuild the site?

When the technical causes pile up (a confusing structure, slow pages, generic copy, a platform that won’t let you fix them), starting from a clean foundation often costs less than patching. When we rebuild a site we also take care of the move: redirects from the old pages, the sitemap, verification in Search Console, so what Google already knew isn’t lost. On client sites, Google Lighthouse scores 92 to 100 for SEO (mobile, October 6, 2026). See the live projects.