Don't panic if your site isn't appearing on Google. Follow these steps to identify and fix any issues.
If your website isn't appearing on Google, there are a number of factors that could be responsible.
In this post, I'll explore the most common reasons why a website isn't showing up on Google and what you can do to fix the problem.
Is my website visible on Google?
Before you can begin to assess any issues with your website and answer the question of the Why doesn't my website appear on Google?, you need to confirm that it is not actually on Google.
There are several ways to check if your site is in Google's index.
First, you can create a Google Search Console account and verify ownership of your website.
You can then go to the “Indexing” section where you can see all the pages that are currently in the index.
You can also use the URL Inspection tool: “Check any URL within 'yourdomainname.com' to directly search for a specific page.
Another way to find out if your website is on Google is to perform a search on Google.it. In the search field, type:
site:domainname.it and press Enter.
In the results, you'll see all the pages on your website that are in Google's index. If no results appear, none of your pages are currently listed in Google.
If this is the case, you'll want to know why. Let's dive into the details and see why your site isn't appearing on Google.
Why isn't my website appearing on Google? Reasons and possible solutions
- The website is new
- Google crawler is blocked
- You have the NOINDEX tag on your pages
- The website is penalized and removed from Google's index
- Lack of original content
- Insufficient backlinks
- Your targeting for highly competitive keywords
- Your website is too slow
- Your website is experiencing technical issues
- Your website has been hacked and removed from Google
1. The website is new
The first reason your website might not appear on Google is simply that your site is new.
Google only displays sites that are stored in its index. When you first create a website, Google has no way of knowing it exists. It takes time for the search engine to find new sites, but there are steps you can take to speed up the process.
There are a couple of solutions to get your new website to appear on Google.
First, you can wait for the search engine to find it. Now, this isn't the best idea because it could take Google a while to find it, especially if you don't have any other websites linking to you.
The other option is to create a sitemap and submit it through Google Search Console. This tells Google that your site exists and that you want it included in the index.
2. Google's crawler is blocked
Google finds websites through a process called crawling. In this process, they send robots known as crawlers across the internet looking for new websites to add to their index.
If you block Google from crawling your website, their crawlers will skip your pages and they will not be available to display on Google.
The most common way Google crawlers are blocked is through the robots.txt file. This file provides instructions to Google on how to treat a website. Most websites have one, and it's usually stored in the site's root directory.
Solution:
You can check if your robots.txt file is blocking Google from crawling your site in Google Search Console.
If you have added your sitemap to Search Console, you can go to the “Indexing” – “Pages” page and check for any errors while your site is crawled.
Look for a message that says “Blocked by robots.txt.”.
You can also check your robots.txt file directly to see if it's blocking crawlers.
To do this, you'll need to go to your hosting platform's file directory. The robots.txt file should be in the root folder.
When you open the file, look for the following user agents:
User-agent: *
User-agent: Googlebot
If you find the code with “Disallow: /” under one of these, you are blocking Google from crawling your site.
To allow Google to crawl your site, simply remove the “Disallow://” snippet and save your robots.txt file.
The next time Google tries to crawl your website, there should be no problems.
3. You have the NOINDEX tag on your pages
Allowing Google to crawl your pages is only part of getting your site listed in search engines. You also need to allow Google to index your pages.
Now, the process for indexing your pages is similar to crawling. If you tell Google that you don't want certain pages included in the index, it won't include them.
This is typically done using a "noindex" meta tag. The tag is a small piece of HTML code added to a page. It simply tells Google not to include that page in its index.
In most cases, these tags won't be added to your site unless you do so yourself. However, there are situations where you might unexpectedly apply the "noindex" tag to your pages.
For example, if your site uses WordPress, there's a "Search Engine Visibility" setting. If you check the box that says "Discourage search engines from indexing this site," the "noindex" tag will be added to all your pages.
Solution:
You can check in Google Search Console to see if any of your pages have the “noindex” tag applied. Go to the “Indexing” – “Pages” section and look for any errors that say “Excluded based on the “noindex” tag.”.
If you find the tag on any page, there are several ways to remove it. You can dive into the HTML code for that particular page and remove it yourself.
Or you can use an extension like the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress. This will allow you to specify which pages have the tag and ensure it isn't added to pages you don't want.
4. The website is penalized and removed from Google's index
Google has a set of guidelines that website owners must follow to ensure their website is eligible for search engine rankings. Violating these guidelines will result in a penalty.
This will cause your pages to rank lower or be excluded from the index altogether.
There are two types of penalties you can receive from Google: algorithmic and manual.
Algorithmic penalties occur when Google's algorithm deems there are quality issues with your site and decides to penalize you accordingly.
Manual penalties occur when a human reviews your website and determines that your site does not meet Google's Webmaster Quality guidelines.
Some of the reasons you may receive a manual penalty include:
- Spam
- Structured data problems
- Unnatural links (PBN + Spam) pointing to your site
- Unnatural links from your site
- Hidden text and keyword stuffing
- Deceptive redirects
Solution:
The quickest way to find out if your website is penalized by Google is to search within Google Search Console.
Go to the “Security and Manual Actions” section and click “Manual Actions”.
This will show you if Google has applied manual penalties to your site.
If you're not penalized, you'll see a message that says "No issues detected." If any manual actions have been taken against your site, they'll all be listed on the page.
Check Google penalties using the Manual Actions report.
Google will give you the opportunity to resolve the issues and submit a request to remove the penalty. Once you've resolved the issues, select "Request Review" from the manual actions page. Google says it looks for the following in review requests:
- An explanation of the exact problem on your site.
- Description of the steps you took to resolve the issue.
- The result of your efforts.
Now, algorithmic penalties are harder to track because Google won't notify you if you've received one. If your site isn't appearing on Google, it's probably not an algorithmic penalty.
However, if your site has ranked well in the past and you've seen a sudden drop in your rankings, it could be due to an algorithmic penalty.
The best course of action is to perform a technical audit. Look for duplicate content issues or serious performance problems.
5. Lack of original content
Another possible reason why your website isn't appearing on Google is a lack of original, quality content on your site.
The goal of Google's search engine is to provide users with the most relevant results for their search queries. To do this, it will rank the content it deems best at the top of its results.
Google has proven to value original and in-depth content. If your pages simply repeat the same ideas found on other websites, they're unlikely to rank highly.
Solution:
Create new, original content around your target keywords. Try to approach a topic from a different perspective and provide valuable insights not found in similar articles online.
6. Insufficient backlinks
Backlinks are a signal of quality and are one of the most important factors in search engine rankings.
If your website doesn't have many backlinks, it indicates a lack of authority. With lower page and domain authority, it's harder to appear in Google results.
Solution:
Getting high-quality backlinks can take time, especially if your site is new. The first step to earning links is creating high-quality content.
If you don't have any pages worth linking to, earning links will be even more challenging.
After you've created several high-value pages/articles, reach out to authoritative sites in your industry and ask them to link to your site.
There are many ways to approach this process that are beyond the scope of this post; you can read this article for more details: Link Building for SEO: What It Is and How to Do It
7. Highly competitive keywords
Depending on your industry, the SEO keywords you're trying to rank for may be highly competitive. Naturally, this will make it harder for your site to appear for these terms.
Failure to rank for these keywords could be attributed to the industry you're in rather than any issues with your site.
You will need to verify that this is the case and that your lack of visibility is not the result of a deeper problem.
Solution:
Check the Coverage section within Google Search Console or perform a Google search using your website name to see if your website is included in the index.
Once you confirm that your site is indeed on Google, you'll know that the problem is ranking for certain keywords rather than a complete lack of visibility.
In this situation, you'll need to work on improving your rankings so that they appear high on the list for your chosen keywords. This means continuing to create useful content, increasing domain authority through high-quality backlinks, and ensuring all your site's technical aspects are in order.
If you do this, you should see your rankings improve over time. While you wait for your site to rank for more competitive keywords, you should consider other lower-difficulty keywords to help your site gain organic search traffic.
Use one of the best keyword research tools This way, you can find the less competitive long-tail pages and create appropriate content. You'll be able to rank these pages faster. While the traffic you receive may be less than your goals dictate, driving users to your pages will help increase your site's authority.
Get help from me too Keyword Research Guide where you can download the template I usually use.
8. The website is too slow
Google strives to provide users with the best possible experience, taking many technical factors into account when indexing and ranking websites. The most important technical factor they will evaluate is your website's speed.
Slow page loading leads to a poor user experience and, as a result, will affect your site's visibility on Google.
Your website’s mobile performance takes precedence over the desktop version as Google follows a “mobile-first indexing” approach when crawling.
This means that your site in mobile mode serves as a benchmark for evaluating its quality.
Generally, a slow-loading site won't cause your entire site to be dropped from Google, but it can impact individual pages and, of course, your competitive keyword rankings.
Common causes of slow page loading include JavaScript issues, large images, and lack of server resources.
Solution:
There are many tools you can use to test your website's loading speed.
If your website has sufficient data, you can use Google Search Console's Core Web Vitals Report to measure the performance of your web pages. URLs will be categorized into three categories based on their loading speed: "Poor," "Needs Improvement," and "Good.".
You can drill down into the details of each page to get a better idea of what's causing any performance delays.
In addition to Search Console, there are also a number of free website speed testing tools on the web, including Google Pagespeed Insights And GTmetrix.
Be sure to cache your pages and use a CDN. This will allow you to serve saved versions of your website's static elements.
For more details, read my detailed guide: How to Speed Up WordPress
9. The website has technical problems
If your website experiences frequent technical issues, it can be difficult for your website to appear on Google.
Issues like server crashes, DNS issues, and HTTP errors not only impact user experience but also hinder Google's ability to crawl and index your site.
Another common technical problem is the heavy use of JavaScript on a site.
JavaScript can be difficult for search engines to crawl, which can cause problems with Google's search and indexing of your pages.
This is a common problem if your navigation elements are in JavaScript. For example, if your site uses a JavaScript mega menu, Google will have difficulty crawling the links to the menu pages. This can lead to reduced visibility for many of your web pages.
Solution:
Perform a complete technical SEO audit for your website. This will provide you with details of all the different technical issues your website may be facing.
You can minimize the number of technical issues you encounter by using high-quality hosting. This will ensure you don't run into server issues.
Check out my ranking of best hosting for WordPress.
Try to minimize the amount of JavaScript on your site whenever possible.
10. The site was hacked and removed from Google
If your website has been hacked, it could affect its ability to appear in Google search results.
The site may be blacklisted and removed from the index entirely, or Google may choose to add a message to all search results highlighting that the site is unsafe.
With the latter, your site may still be on Google, but the chances of users clicking through to the page are slim.
Solution:
You can check if a hack is affecting your website's Google rankings through your Search Console account.
Go to the “Security Issues” section and check if any URLs are listed.
If any of your pages have problems, Google will provide more details about the issue. You can then work to fix the problems and get your site back in order.
After cleaning up your site, you can request a review from Google in the Security Issues section.
Try to protect your site in the future. Users are only allowed one review every 30 days, so if your site is frequently infected with malware, you'll severely limit your chances of getting traffic from Google.
How to make a site visible on Google
If you're trying to get your site listed on Google or are having trouble achieving the rankings you want, here are some actionable steps you can take to improve your search engine visibility:
1. Set up Google Search Console
The first step to getting your site listed on Google is setting up your Google Search Console account. The platform will act as a hub for monitoring your search engine performance and provide helpful tools to take action when necessary.
2. Submit the sitemap
After setting up your Search Console account, you'll need to submit your website's sitemap. This file will let Google know your site exists and provide a list of all the URLs you want to be crawled and indexed.
After you submit your sitemap, Google will add your site to a queue of sites to be crawled. With a "Successful" sitemap, it will also know where to go for future crawls and will do so regularly based on how often you publish and update your content.
3. Use the URL Inspection Tool
The URL Inspection tool within Search Console allows you to assess the status of each individual URL. When you enter a URL into the field, you'll be taken to a page with all the data from Google's index for that URL. You'll see whether it's currently on Google, whether the page is mobile-friendly, and when it was last crawled.
If your page isn't on Google or you've made updates, you can click the "Request Indexing" button to have Google crawl your site again.
It will quickly scan the page to see if it's eligible. If so, Google will add it to a crawling and indexing queue.
4. Perform a technical SEO audit
A thorough website audit is the most effective way to diagnose any technical issues that could negatively impact your website's search engine rankings.
Some of the key areas to examine during a technical SEO audit include the following:
- Loading times
- Sitemap Status
- Duplicate content
- Metadata problems
- Broken links
- Scanning errors
5. Create unique content
Without unique, high-quality content, Google has little reason to rank your site highly. Good content is also essential for providing value to your audience and establishing your brand's authority.
Create original content focusing on your primary and secondary keywords.
You should also check your website for duplicate content errors, which can lead to a Google penalty. This is usually part of a full SEO audit.
6. Generate high-quality links
Backlinks are essential for good rankings, especially for competitive keywords. As you begin filling your site with quality content, consider launching a link building campaign.
Stick to websites with high domain authority, as clicks from these sites will be more effective in boosting your site's rankings.
Recommendations
There are several reasons why your website might not appear on Google.
For starters, it might be because your site is new and Google hasn't had a chance to find it yet.
It could be because you’re hindering Google in some way, by blocking crawlers or tagging your pages as “noindex.”.
If none of these are the cause, there's probably an aspect of your site that needs improving. It could be a technical issue like slow loading times or server crashes. Or it could be a lack of original content and high-quality backlinks.
In rare cases, you may even have been penalized by Google.
The best way to get your site listed on Google is to complete the following steps:
- Create your Google Search Console account
- Send the stamp
- Create unique content
- Get high-quality backlinks
- Perform regular technical SEO audits
By following these steps, you can proactively manage and monitor your site's performance on Google so you can quickly make any necessary changes.
If you need assistance diagnosing and resolving your SEO problems, please contact me.
Conclusion
You've put time, effort, and resources into your website, and now you're not getting any visitors. The best solution is to contact an SEO consultant for help.
I really hope this guide was helpful to you and that you found solutions to the problems that arise when your website does not appear on Google.
