Why isn't my website showing up on Google: the real causes

Someone typing "why isn't my site showing up on Google" is almost always describing two different problems with the same sentence, and the difference matters because the causes don't get fixed the same way.

The first is that Google simply doesn't have the site on file: it was never crawled, or it was crawled and left out. The second is that Google knows it perfectly well, but for the searches that matter it doesn't show it high enough to get noticed: that's a ranking problem, and it's the subject of ranking your website on Google. Here I'll stick to the first case, because it's the one most often confused with the other, and it's also the one Google has given the clearer answer to.

The test that actually counts, according to Google

First thing to clear up: typing site:yourdomain.com into Google is not the test Google itself points to. In its own help page on the Search Console URL Inspection tool, the site: operator isn't mentioned once. What Google says instead, word for word, is this: "for a definitive test of whether your URL is on Google, search for it on Google", meaning pasting the page's exact address into the search box.

Even then, a positive result isn't a full guarantee: the same page warns that the status "URL is on Google" doesn't guarantee the page will then show up in the results for a specific search, because the tool doesn't account for every display requirement. That's the same line again between the two problems from the start: being in the index isn't the same as surfacing for that particular query.

For a proper check, inside Search Console (free, you just need to verify ownership of the site) there are two tools with different jobs: the Page indexing report, which gives the picture for the whole site, and URL Inspection, which gives the verdict for a single page, including the reason when it's missing.

Why a site isn't indexed (yet)

Google Search Central's own FAQ on crawling and indexing doesn't dance around it: "in general, the most common reason a site isn't indexed is that it's too new", followed by the advice to be patient and ask Google to crawl it, which you do from URL Inspection inside Search Console.

The other reasons the same page lists:

• the site isn't well linked from other sites, so Google struggles to discover it on its own;
• the site's structure makes crawling hard, or the site itself blocks it outright, through an overly strict robots.txt file or a tag that blocks indexing;
• the site wasn't reachable at the moment Google tried to crawl it, which shows up as crawl errors in Search Console;
• the site doesn't follow Google's basic search guidelines, or it's been compromised or altered by a third party without the owner knowing;
• the domain has a problematic history: a rare case, and Google itself calls it rare;
• the site moved to a new address recently without following the official site-move instructions;
• a previous owner, or anyone who once had access, requested removal of a page through Search Console, and that request is still in effect.

The first two show up most often on a site that just went live. The last four are worth checking if the site has been up for a while and suddenly stopped appearing: it almost always means something changed (a move, unauthorized access, a block added by mistake), not that Google decided to stop counting it.

What the Search Console report actually says

When a page comes back as not indexed, the Page indexing report assigns it a specific status. Two of them look alike but aren't.

Discovered, currently not indexed means Google knows the URL but hasn't crawled it yet: usually because crawling it right away would have overloaded the site, so the crawl got rescheduled. It's a scheduling matter, not a verdict on the content.

Crawled, currently not indexed is different: Google has read the page and, for now, chosen not to add it to the index. The situation can change on its own later, and Google notes there's no need to resubmit the URL to ask for another crawl.

Then there are the more direct statuses, the ones worth checking yourself first, because they come down to a line on the site rather than a judgment call by Google: a noindex tag left on by mistake, a robots.txt file blocking the crawl, a soft 404 (the page reads as "not found" without actually returning a real 404 status code), or content treated as a duplicate of another page already indexed, with no canonical tag saying which version should count as the real one.

How long it takes

None, literally: Google states that "we cannot make predictions or give guarantees about if or when URLs will be crawled or indexed." There's no official figure in days or weeks, not for a new site and not for a page added to a site that's already indexed. Anyone citing a precise number, "within two weeks", "usually a month", is reporting their own experience, not a published rule: it may be a reasonable estimate, but it isn't what Google commits to in writing.

What to do, in order

1. Verify ownership of the site in Search Console, if you haven't already: without it, none of the tools above are available.
2. Open the Page indexing report and check whether most pages sit in an error state (robots.txt, noindex, 404) or a pending one (discovered or crawled but not indexed).
3. For the one page you care about most, use URL Inspection: it gives a specific reason, and from there you can request a crawl.
4. Check the site's robots.txt file and the page's code yourself for a forgotten noindex tag: they're the two easiest causes to rule out, and also the most common on a site that's been handled by more than one person over time.
5. If the site is new, hold off worrying for now: that's, literally, the most common reason according to Google itself.

If after all this the site turns out to be indexed but still doesn't show up for the searches that matter for your business, the problem changes: at that point the question isn't whether Google has the site anymore, it's where it places it, and that's answered in ranking your website on Google.

If you'd rather have someone else look at these reports for you, it's one of the checks included in the digital check-up: otherwise get in touch and we'll see where your site actually stands.