Short answer
Usually one of two things: the page isn’t indexed, or the site is telling Google to stay away, often with a noindex tag left on after a rebuild. Check indexation first. It takes thirty seconds and decides whether anything else applies.
Search this question and you’ll get a dozen articles listing nine or eleven reasons a site might not appear. They’re all roughly correct and all roughly useless, because a list doesn’t tell you which one is yours.
The reasons aren’t equal and they aren’t parallel. Some of them make every other reason irrelevant — if Google hasn’t stored your page, nothing about your content, your keywords or your backlinks matters at all.
So the useful shape is a sequence: rule out the thing that would make everything else moot, then move down.
That’s what this is. Five checks, in the order I run them on a client site, each one narrowing what it can still be.
First: which problem do you actually have?
In short: These get treated as the same complaint and they are not remotely the same problem. Almost everyone asking this question is in the right-hand column — but it is worth thirty seconds to be certain, because the left-hand column is cheap to fix and the right-hand one is not.
How do I check if my website is on Google?
Search site:yourdomain.com in Google, then open the Pages report in Google Search Console. The site: search is a thirty-second rough check. The Pages report lists every URL Google knows about, whether each one is indexed, and Google’s stated reason for every one that isn’t.
Any results from the site: search mean Google has stored at least some of your pages. To check a single page, search site:yourdomain.com/the-page, or paste the URL into the URL Inspection tool in Search Console, which tells you whether that exact URL is on Google.
Don’t expect every URL to appear. Google’s own Page indexing report documentation says you shouldn’t expect all URLs on your site to be indexed, only the canonical pages.
Tag archives, filtered views and near-copies being left out is normal. What matters is whether the pages you want found, your homepage and the pages for each service, are in the indexed column.
The five checks, in order
Figure
Check in this order, because each problem hides the ones after it
- 01Indexed?
- 02Not blocked?
- 03Readable?
- 04Targets real searches?
- 05Can compete?
Run these in sequence — stop when one of them explains it
Is the page in Google at all?
Search site:yourdomain.com. Then search site:yourdomain.com/the-exact-page. Nothing returned means not indexed, and you can ignore everything anyone has told you about keywords until that’s solved.
Search Console → Pages is the better version of this check. It splits every URL into indexed and not indexed, with Google’s own stated reason for each exclusion.
Are you telling Google to stay away?
View the page source and search for “noindex”. Then open yourdomain.com/robots.txt and look for Disallow lines. A noindex left on after a rebuild is the single most common cause of a site vanishing, and it’s invisible to everyone except the person who checks.
WordPress has a Settings → Reading tick box that does this to the whole site. It’s checked during development and forgotten at launch more often than anyone admits.
Can Google actually reach the content?
Use the URL Inspection tool in Search Console and view the rendered HTML. If the words you expect are missing, the content is arriving via JavaScript that Google hasn’t executed. Also check the canonical tag — a page canonicalised to a different URL is asking to be ignored.
Redirect chains and pages nothing links to belong here too. A page with no internal links pointing at it’s a page Google has little reason to find or re-crawl.
Does the page target something people search for?
This is where most sites actually fail. The page is indexed, technically fine, and built around a phrase nobody types. A “chartered building consultancy” page will never be found by someone searching damp survey cost, because the page doesn’t contain the search anywhere.
Search Console → Performance shows which queries you already appear for. It’s the cheapest keyword research available and it’s about your own site.
Is it simply outgunned, or too new?
If you’ve got this far, you’re indexed, reachable and targeting real searches — and you’re being beaten. Search your target term and look honestly at who’s on page one. If it’s national brands with hundreds of linking domains, the gap is authority and time, not a fault you can fix this week.
Age matters here in a way it doesn’t above. A domain with no history takes months to be trusted with commercial terms, however good the page is.
Free tool · Is my site on Google?
Answer in order. Stop at the first “no”.
Is the page in Google at all?
Search site:yourdomain.com/the-exact-page. Anything returned?
This is your problem. Not indexed, so ignore keyword advice until this is solved. Search Console → Pages lists every URL that isn’t indexed with Google’s own reason. Fix that reason, then request indexing with URL Inspection.
Are you letting Google in?
View the page source: no “noindex”? Open yourdomain.com/robots.txt: no Disallow covering the page?
This is your problem. You’re telling Google to stay away. Remove the noindex or the Disallow line, then request indexing. On WordPress, untick Settings → Reading → “Discourage search engines”.
Can Google reach the content?
Search Console → URL Inspection → View crawled page. Are your words in the HTML, and is the canonical this page?
This is your problem. Google can’t read what visitors see. Either the content arrives by JavaScript Google hasn’t run, the canonical points elsewhere, or nothing links to the page. Fix the one that applies.
Does the page target something people search for?
Search Console → Performance → filter to this page. Does it appear for the searches you want?
This is your problem. The page is built around a phrase nobody types. It needs keyword research and a rewrite around what customers actually search.
Can you compete with what’s on page one?
Search your target term. Is page one sites like yours, not national brands?
This is your problem. Nothing is broken. The gap is authority and time: links, more pages covering the topic, and patience. A new domain takes months to be trusted.
All five passThen the page is findable and competitive, and it’s a matter of time. If it still isn’t showing after a few months, a free audit will find what the checks can’t.
Why is my new website not showing up on Google?
A new website usually isn’t on Google yet because Google hasn’t crawled it. Google says crawling can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, and that requesting a crawl doesn’t guarantee a page gets included at all. Ranking for anything competitive takes months on top of that.
That range comes from Google’s guidance on asking it to recrawl a site, which also says that requesting the same URL over and over doesn’t speed things up. What does help on a new site:
- Connect Search Console on launch day and submit the sitemap once.
- Request indexing in URL Inspection for the homepage and the main service pages.
- Link to the site from places Google already crawls: your Google Business Profile, social profiles, any directory or trade body listing you have.
Indexing and ranking run on separate clocks. A new domain can be indexed within days and still sit on page five for its main service term for months, because it has no links and no history. That part you can’t hurry.
If a month has passed and site:yourdomain.com still returns nothing, I’d stop putting it down to age. Go back to check two: a new site that’s blocking Google stays invisible however long you wait.
Why is my WordPress, Squarespace, Wix or Shopify site not showing up on Google?
Every major website builder has a setting that hides the whole site from search, and it’s often left on after the build. Check it first: the WordPress “Discourage search engines” box, the Squarespace crawler setting, the Wix indexing toggle, and the Shopify store password.
- WordPress. Settings → Reading, the box labelled “Discourage search engines from indexing this site”. Since WordPress 5.3, ticking it adds a noindex, nofollow robots tag to the site, according to the WordPress Reading Settings documentation. Untick it and save.
- Squarespace. Settings → Crawlers. With the search engine crawler block switched on, Squarespace adds Disallow: / to your robots.txt. Individual pages have their own “Hide page from search results” toggle in the page’s SEO settings, which adds a noindex. Both are covered in Squarespace’s guide to hiding a site from search results.
- Wix. In the dashboard, SEO & GEO → Tools and settings → SEO Settings, where the “Let search engines index your site” toggle needs to be on (Wix Help Center).
- Shopify. While a store is password protected, Shopify says all of its pages are hidden from visitors and search engines. Turn it off under Online Store → Preferences → Store access by switching off Private mode (Shopify Help Center).
If the setting is correct and the site still isn’t indexed, the platform isn’t the problem, and the rest of the checks apply as normal. A technical SEO review starts with exactly these settings.
The causes I actually find, ranked
Across the audits I run, the same handful account for nearly everything:
A noindex tag from a rebuild. The site was staged, the tag was correct on staging, and it shipped. Free to fix, and it can restore a site in a fortnight.
A migration that broke the redirects. New URLs, old links pointing nowhere. The pages exist, the authority doesn’t reach them. This is the most expensive one to leave alone, because every week the old pages stay dead is authority draining away.
No page for the thing people search. Not a fault, an omission. The business sells a service that has real search demand and there’s no page about it — the homepage is expected to do the work, and homepages are bad at specifics.
Content that only exists after JavaScript runs. Less common than it was, and still a reliable way to be invisible on a framework configured carelessly.
Nothing links to the page. Internally or externally. Google can technically reach it and has no reason to think it matters.
Duplicate and thin pages are the other reason individual pages go missing, even when the rest of the site is fine. When several URLs carry the same content, Google picks one version to show in Search and leaves the others out, so town pages that differ only by the place name, or the same product on three URLs, tend to collapse into one result.
Thin pages, a few lines of text or copy repeated from elsewhere on the site, tend to show up in the Pages report as “Crawled - currently not indexed”: Google fetched them and didn’t store them.
I’d either make the page worth indexing or merge it into one that is. Requesting indexing again changes nothing.
Why is my website not ranking on Google?
If site:yourdomain.com returns your pages, your website is on Google and the problem is ranking. The page doesn’t match what people search, isn’t as useful as what’s already on page one, or the site hasn’t earned enough authority yet. Ranking 60th produces no traffic, so it feels identical to being invisible.
This is the majority case, and it deserves saying plainly: being on page six is functionally the same as not existing. Click-through rate collapses after the first few positions, and by the bottom of page two it rounds to zero.
A site ranking 60th for a hundred terms has no traffic and looks, from the inside, exactly like a site Google has never heard of.
The difference is that the fix is known. You aren’t solving a mystery any more; you’re closing a gap.
That’s a matter of building the page the search deserves, making it technically sound, and earning enough authority to be taken seriously — in that order, because the first two are within your control and the third is mostly a consequence of them.
I’d start with the queries Search Console already shows you appearing for, then keyword research for the services that have no page yet. If you’d rather have the whole gap mapped for you, page by page, that’s what an SEO audit produces.
Has my site been penalised by Google?
Almost certainly not. A Google penalty, which Google calls a manual action, only exists when a human reviewer has found your site breaking Google’s spam policies, and it’s listed in the Manual actions report in Search Console. If that report shows a green tick, your site hasn’t been penalised.
Google’s Manual Actions report help says a site with a manual action may have some or all of its pages removed from search results, and that a site without one sees a green check mark. Open the report before assuming anything else.
Everything else people call a penalty isn’t one. A drop after a core update is Google reassessing every site at once, and Google’s core updates guidance is explicit that pages which move down aren’t necessarily bad: other pages now rate higher.
The fix there’s a better page than the ones that overtook you. And the most common “penalty” I find is self-inflicted: a noindex left on after a rebuild (check two), or a migration that broke the redirects.
What not to do
Don’t resubmit the sitemap repeatedly. Once is enough. Asking again doesn’t persuade Google of anything.
Don’t buy links to fix an indexing problem. See above.
Don’t rebuild the site because it “must be the platform”. It’s almost never the platform. Rebuilding without diagnosing usually recreates the original fault on a new template, and now you have two problems and no baseline.
Don’t judge it by searching your own name. You’re signed in, you have visited the site, and Google knows it. Ranking for your own business name proves you’re indexed and nothing else.
Common questions
Why is my website not showing up on Google at all?
Search site:yourdomain.com in Google. No results at all means the site isn't indexed, and that’s a different, more fixable problem than ranking badly. The usual causes are a noindex tag left on after a rebuild, a robots.txt blocking crawlers, a brand new domain Google hasn't got to yet, or a site built so that the content only appears after JavaScript runs.
Why does my website show up when I search the name but not for anything else?
Because your business name has almost no competition and your service terms have plenty. Ranking for your own name proves you're indexed — the site is findable and the technical foundation works. What's missing is a page built around what customers actually type, and enough authority to compete for it.
Why did my website disappear from Google?
Something changed. In rough order of likelihood: a rebuild reintroduced a noindex tag, a migration broke the redirects, the pages were consolidated or deleted, a core algorithm update moved the whole market, or in rare cases a manual action. Search Console will tell you which — the Pages report and the Manual Actions report between them cover almost every case.
Does my website need to be submitted to Google?
Not strictly. Google finds most sites on its own by following links. But submitting a sitemap in Search Console removes the wait and, more importantly, gives you the reporting that answers everything else on this page. It takes ten minutes and it's free.
Want it done on your site?
Send me the address. The free audit is a short, plain-English read on what to fix first.
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