Why your website is not showing up on Google
Last updated
Before you change anything, run one search. Type site:yourdomain.com into Google, using your own domain, with no space after the colon. The answer tells you which of two completely different problems you have. They have completely different fixes, and most advice online solves the wrong one.
What does a site:yourdomain.com search tell me?
It tells you whether Google holds your pages at all. If pages are listed, you are indexed and your problem is ranking. If nothing is listed, you are not indexed: Google either cannot reach your pages or has been told not to keep them. Run all three:
site:yourdomain.com site:yourdomain.com/services "Your Exact Business Name" yourtown
| What you see | What it means | Where to go next |
|---|---|---|
| Several of your pages | Indexed. Google has the site. | A ranking problem. Reasons 4, 5 and 6. |
| Only the homepage | Partly indexed. Inner pages are being dropped. | Reasons 2, 3 and 5. |
| A URL with no description under it | Google knows the URL but cannot read the page. | Reason 2. Check robots.txt first. |
| Nothing at all | Not indexed. | Reasons 1, 2, 3 and 4, in that order. |
In Google's own words: "The site: operator doesn't necessarily return all the URLs that are indexed under the prefix specified in the query." It is a yes or no, not a page count. Source: Google Search Central.
Why is my website not showing on Google search?
Six realistic causes. Four stop the site being indexed at all. Two let it be indexed but keep it off page one. Work down in order; the cheap causes are the common ones.
1. The site is too new
Google says it plainly: "It can take a few weeks for Google to notice a new site, or any changes in your existing site." Check: if the site went live under 30 days ago and the other five causes are clear, nothing is wrong. Fix: submit an XML sitemap in Search Console and request indexing on your five best URLs. Nobody can make this faster.
2. robots.txt is blocking Google
Check: open yourdomain.com/robots.txt in a browser. If you see Disallow: / underneath User-agent: *, every page is blocked. Fix: delete that line. It usually arrives from a staging server hidden from search engines, then launched with the block still in place.
# This blocks your whole site from Google. Delete the Disallow line. User-agent: * Disallow: /
3. Your pages carry a noindex tag
Check: load your homepage, press Ctrl+U (Cmd+Option+U on a Mac) to view the source, then Ctrl+F for noindex. On WordPress, also check Settings → Reading for "Discourage search engines from indexing this site". Fix: remove the tag. It is an instruction to delete the page from search, and Google obeys it.
<meta name="robots" content="noindex">
Reasons 2 and 3 trap people together. Google: "For the noindex rule to be effective, the page or resource must not be blocked by a robots.txt file." Block a page to hide it and Google never crawls it, never sees the noindex, and the URL can still appear. Source: Google Search Central.
4. Nothing on the web links to you
Google finds most pages by following links, so a new domain that nothing links to can sit uncrawled for weeks. Check: the Links report in Search Console, under "Top linking sites". Zero is a real answer. Fix: claim the free listings that link out: Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Business Connect, Foursquare, Yelp, your trade association, suppliers, the local chamber. Ten of those is an afternoon and costs $0.
5. The content is thin or duplicated
An 80-word page, or six town pages identical but for the town name, gets crawled and then dropped. Check: the Page indexing report, for "Crawled - currently not indexed" and "Duplicate without user-selected canonical". Fix: one page per service, 300 words or more, with prices, timescales, areas covered, and answers to what people ask on the phone.
6. You are indexed, and simply outranked
Check: in an incognito window, search your service plus your town the way a customer would. Page three means you are indexed and losing on merit. Fix: the slow one. A complete Google Business Profile, a page per service, the same name, address and phone everywhere, reviews arriving steadily. See fixing an existing site.
How long does it actually take to rank on Google?
Indexing takes days to a few weeks. Ranking takes far longer than most people selling SEO admit. Ahrefs studied one million URLs and found (2025) that only 1.74% of newly published pages reach the top 10 within a year, and 72.9% of pages currently in the top 10 are more than three years old.
The same study holds one hopeful number: of pages that do reach the top 10, 40.82% got there within a month. Fast wins happen fast or not at all. Everything else is a multi-year grind against pages that started before you. Source: Ahrefs, updated May 2025.
| Stage | Realistic timeframe | How you know it happened |
|---|---|---|
| Google discovers the site | 2 days to 4 weeks | Anything shows for site:yourdomain.com |
| All pages indexed | 2 to 8 weeks | Page indexing report lists them as "Indexed" |
| Showing in the local map pack | 1 to 6 months | Driven by Google Business Profile and reviews, not the site |
| Top 10 for a competitive service term | 1 month, or several years, or never | 40.82% arrive in month 1; 1.74% of new pages inside a year |
How do I set up Google Search Console?
Go to search.google.com/search-console, add your domain, and verify with a DNS TXT record or an HTML file. It is free, takes ten minutes, and is the only place Google tells you what it thinks of your site. Read three reports; ignore the rest.
| Report | The question it answers | What to act on |
|---|---|---|
| Page indexing | Which pages did Google keep, and why were the rest dropped? | Every reason under "Not indexed" is a named, fixable cause |
| Performance | Which searches show your site, and how often? | Zero impressions is an indexing problem, not a ranking one |
| URL Inspection | What exactly did Google do with this one page? | Names the blocking reason, and has the Request Indexing button |
Are free website audits worth anything?
Mostly no. A free audit is usually an automated scan wrapped around a sales call, and you can run that scan yourself in two minutes for nothing. The scanner finds real issues, but returns 40 of them with no idea which two matter for a six-page plumbing site in one town. Here is the whole scan:
- Search site:yourdomain.com. Indexed, or not.
- Open yourdomain.com/robots.txt and look for Disallow: /.
- View source on your homepage and search for noindex.
- Run the homepage through PageSpeed Insights and note the mobile score.
- Open the site on your phone, on mobile data, and try to tap your phone number.
What a paid audit adds is judgement: a person who reads those results, understands your business, and names the two things worth doing and the 38 to ignore. If it does not end in a short ordered list with a price beside each item, it is a lead magnet, not an audit.
Where do we fit, and when should you not pay us?
Do not pay anyone if the fix is on this page. A robots.txt line, a noindex tag or an empty Google Business Profile are afternoon jobs that cost $0, and we would rather you did them.
We are worth paying when the site itself is the problem. Fablence is $299 once, charged only when you approve the design, then $69 a month for the site, hosting, maintenance, 30 minutes of edits, nightly backups, uptime monitoring and a monthly report, with old page addresses redirected so existing rankings carry over (prices as of September 2026). If reason 4 or 6 is yours, the $199 a month tier is the one doing that work: Bing Places, Apple Business Connect, Foursquare and Yelp claimed, the Google Business Profile run, service and service-area pages written, review requests automated. See pricing.
We build a free rebuilt homepage first, at a private link, and delete it if you say no. You already have a site, so we take your services, hours, photos and copy off the open web ourselves: you send us nothing. We do not build ecommerce stores, booking systems, custom web apps, membership portals or multi-location franchises. If your site already ranks and you are only replacing the design, read redesigning without losing rankings first.
Common questions
- Why is my website not showing up on Google?
- Search your own domain with site:yourdomain.com. If pages appear, you are indexed and the problem is ranking, not indexing. If nothing appears, Google has not indexed the site — usually because it is new, blocked by robots.txt, carrying a noindex tag, or has no links pointing at it.
- How long does it take for a new website to appear on Google?
- Indexing usually takes one to four weeks. Ranking for anything competitive takes considerably longer: Ahrefs found that only 1.74 percent of newly published pages reach the top ten within a year, and 72.9 percent of pages currently in the top ten are more than three years old.
- Is a free website audit worth anything?
- Most are a scan wrapped around a sales call, and the scan is something you can run yourself in two minutes with PageSpeed Insights and Google Search Console, both free. An audit is only worth paying for when a person looks at the result and tells you which items actually matter for your business.