Why Is My Website Not Showing Up on Google?

The figures used below come from this site's own Search Console and server logs, including the numbers that looked alarming and turned out to be normal.

Step 1: indexed, or not indexed?

Type site:yourdomain.com into Google. Two possible outcomes:

• Pages appear. Google has your site. It simply is not ranking you highly enough for anyone to see — a competition problem, not a technical one. Skip to the last section.
• Nothing appears. Google does not have your pages. Work through the blockers below.

For a specific page, the URL Inspection tool in Search Console is definitive — it tells you whether that exact URL is indexed and, if not, why.

Step 2: read the indexing report correctly

This is where most people frighten themselves unnecessarily. Search Console's page indexing report on this site reads:

Indexed	Not indexed
486	332

332 not indexed sounds like a serious fault. It is not. The report defaults to All known pages — every URL Google has ever seen on the domain, including ones you deliberately removed. This site retired 353 weak pages and redirected each to a better one. Google remembers all 353 and files them as not indexed, reason: Page with redirect.

That is the redirect working exactly as intended.

Switch the dropdown from "All known pages" to "All submitted pages." That filters to URLs in your sitemap — the pages you actually chose to publish. It is the only number that answers "are my pages indexed?"

Step 3: which "not indexed" reasons matter

Reason	Verdict
Page with redirect	Normal. Old URL points somewhere better.
Alternate page with proper canonical tag	Normal. You nominated another version.
Duplicate without user-selected canonical	Check. Google found near-identical pages and picked one.
Excluded by 'noindex' tag	Fine if deliberate. A serious bug if not.
Blocked by robots.txt	Check. Often accidental.
Not found (404)	Fine for deleted pages; a problem if something links to them.
Crawled — currently not indexed	Act. Google looked and declined.
Discovered — currently not indexed	Act. Google knows the URL but has not fetched it.

Only the last four rows deserve your attention, and the final two are the ones people actually mean when they say "my pages aren't indexed".

"Discovered — currently not indexed"

Google found the URL, usually in your sitemap, and has not got round to crawling it. That is a priority signal: nothing on your site suggests the page is worth fetching.

The fix is internal links. Measured on this site from server logs, over a two-week window: pages with at least one internal link pointing to them were crawled 50% of the time; orphaned pages, reachable only via the sitemap, were crawled 29%. A sitemap tells Google a URL exists. An internal link tells Google it matters.

"Crawled — currently not indexed"

Harder to hear: Google fetched the page, evaluated it, and decided not to index it. That is a quality judgement.

The usual causes are thin content, near-duplication of another page (yours or someone else's), or a page that does not answer anything a person actually searches for. Adding more pages like it makes this worse, not better. Improve or consolidate instead.

Step 4: the actual technical blockers

If nothing is indexed at all, one of these is usually the reason. Check in this order — the first two account for most cases.

1. A noindex tag. The single most common cause of a completely invisible site. Staging sites are built with noindex and the tag survives the launch. View source and search for it, or check the noindex documentation for every form it takes. In WordPress, check Settings → Reading for "Discourage search engines".
2. robots.txt blocking everything. Visit yourdomain.com/robots.txt. If you see Disallow: / under User-agent: *, that is your answer.
3. Canonical tags pointing elsewhere. If every page declares another URL as canonical — common after a migration — you are telling Google to index that other site instead.
4. The site is genuinely new. Three to six months before consistent visibility is normal, and no technical fix shortcuts it.
5. Content requires JavaScript to appear. Google can render JavaScript but does it in a second, slower pass. If your text only exists after a client-side fetch, indexing is delayed and sometimes incomplete. View source — if the words are not in the raw HTML, that is a risk.
6. No sitemap submitted. Not fatal, but it is the cheapest way to tell Google what exists.
7. Server errors or very slow responses. Repeated 5xx errors reduce how much Google crawls. Worth checking your logs rather than assuming.

Step 5: ask for indexing

In Search Console, use URL Inspection on the page and choose Request indexing. This is the only reliable way to hurry a specific page, and it is limited to a modest number per day — use it on pages that matter, not everything.

Also submit your sitemap under the Sitemaps section, once. Resubmitting daily achieves nothing.

IndexNow does not help here. It is a genuine protocol supported by Bing, Yandex and Seznam, and worth using for them — but Google does not participate. Any tool promising instant Google indexing via IndexNow is describing something that does not happen.

If you are indexed but invisible

Different problem, and the more common one. Being indexed guarantees eligibility, not position. A new site typically ranks somewhere nobody scrolls to.

This site's first full month: 90,700 impressions, 26 clicks, average position 52. Every page was indexed and returning correctly. Position 52 is page five — the traffic was effectively zero despite nothing being broken.

One measurement worth repeating, because it changes what you should write: conversion queries on this site ranked in the top 10 and still earned 0.17% click-through — 1,771 impressions, 3 clicks. Google answered those questions itself in a widget above the results, so ranking first earned nothing.

Before targeting any keyword, search it and look at what sits above the organic results. If Google answers it directly, indexing and ranking will not save you.

Two things worth fixing alongside indexing: page speed, since slow responses reduce how much Google crawls, and the site setup itself if permalinks or the sitemap were never configured properly.

Frequently asked questions

Why is my website not showing up on Google?

Search site:yourdomain.com first. If pages appear, you are indexed and the issue is ranking — usually that the site is new. If nothing appears, check for a noindex tag and a Disallow: / in robots.txt, which together account for most completely invisible sites.

How long does Google take to index a new site?

Days to a few weeks for initial indexing once Google knows the site exists. Consistent search visibility takes three to six months, and meaningful traffic longer. That delay is normal and not a sign of a fault.

What does "Discovered — currently not indexed" mean?

Google knows the URL exists but has not crawled it yet, because nothing signals it is worth prioritising. The fix is internal links. On this site, linked pages were crawled 50% of the time in a two-week window against 29% for orphaned ones.

What does "Crawled — currently not indexed" mean?

Google fetched the page and chose not to index it — a quality judgement. Usual causes are thin content, near-duplication, or a page that answers nothing anyone searches for. Improve or merge the page rather than publishing more like it.

Should I worry about a high "not indexed" count?

Usually not. That report defaults to All known pages, which includes every URL Google has ever seen, redirects and deleted pages included. Switch to All submitted pages to see only the URLs in your sitemap.

How do I force Google to index my page?

Use URL Inspection in Search Console and click Request indexing. There is a daily limit, so reserve it for pages that matter. Nothing else forces indexing, and services claiming otherwise cannot deliver it.

Does submitting to IndexNow get me indexed on Google?

No. IndexNow is supported by Bing, Yandex and Seznam but not by Google. It is worth using for those engines and will do nothing for your Google visibility.

Conclusion

Start with site:yourdomain.com, because indexed-but-invisible and not-indexed need opposite fixes. If you are not indexed, check noindex and robots.txt before anything else. If you are indexed, the answer is usually that the site is young and the work is content and links.

And read the indexing report on the right setting. A frightening "not indexed" number is very often a pile of redirects doing their job.

Related: getting traffic to a new blog covers what the early months realistically look like, and how to get backlinks covers the authority problem underneath ranking.