Website missing from Google: 7 checks, in order

A website can be online without existing for Google. Before concluding that you need to "do SEO", you have to check that Google can find your pages, read them and store them in its index. A page that is not indexed does not appear for any search, not even for your company's name.

Here are the seven checks I run when a website stays invisible, from the most common cause to the rarest. For each one: how to check it, then how to fix it.

Check in one minute whether Google knows your website

Type site:yourdomain.com into Google (replacing it with your address). The results give an overview of the indexed pages. No results: Google has not stored a single page of your website.

This test remains approximate. The reliable tool is Google Search Console, which is free. Create a Domain property: it is verified with a DNS record added at your domain name provider, and it covers every variant of your address (with or without www, http or https). The URL Inspection tool then shows, page by page, whether the address is on Google or not, and why.

1. Is the website blocked? (robots.txt, noindex)

How to check

• Open yourdomain.com/robots.txt. A Disallow: / line under User-agent: * forbids crawling of the entire site.
• View the source code of a page and search for noindex. A <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> tag asks Google not to index the page.
• On WordPress, the "Discourage search engines from indexing this site" box (Settings, then Reading) is often ticked while the site is being built, then forgotten at launch.
• In Search Console, the Pages report lists the reasons "Excluded by 'noindex' tag" and "Blocked by robots.txt".

How to fix

Remove the rule or the tag, then request indexing of the main pages with the URL Inspection tool.

Be careful not to combine the two: the robots.txt file prevents crawling, the noindex tag prevents indexing. If robots.txt blocks a page, Google does not read it, and therefore never sees its noindex tag.

2. Can Google find your pages? (sitemap, internal links)

How to check

• The XML sitemap is the list of pages you want indexed. Check that it exists (often yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml) and that it is submitted in Search Console, under Sitemaps, with a "Success" status.
• Check that every important page receives links from other pages of the site. A page that no other page links to (an "orphan" page) is hard to discover.

How to fix

Generate a sitemap (WordPress has produced one natively since version 5.5, at wp-sitemap.xml), submit it in Search Console, and link every important page from the menu or from the content of other pages.

3. Do your pages point to the right address? (canonical, www, http)

How to check

The same website can respond on four addresses: with or without www, over http or https. Only one should be the official address. The other three must point to it with a permanent redirect (301 or 308), and each page must state this official address in its canonical tag.

In the URL Inspection tool, compare the "User-declared canonical" and the "Google-selected canonical". If they differ, Google has reasons to doubt which version to keep.

Common mistakes:

• a canonical pointing to the old domain after a migration (the method for a redesign without losing SEO explains how to avoid it);
• the same canonical (often the homepage) on every page;
• a canonical pointing to the www version while the site responds without www, or the other way round.

I fixed this on this very website: its canonical tags pointed to the www version, while the site responded without www, and the redirect between the two was declared temporary. Nothing visible to a visitor, but two contradictory signals sent to Google on every page.

How to fix

Choose an official address, redirect the others permanently, then make sure each page declares its own official address as its canonical.

4. Is the website simply too new?

A new website, especially on a new domain name, is not indexed immediately. Google says so itself in its documentation: crawling can take anywhere from several days to several weeks.

To help Google discover the site:

• submit the sitemap in Search Console;
• request indexing of the main pages with the URL Inspection tool (a quota limits the number of requests, and repeating them does not speed anything up);
• add a link to your website from the profiles that already exist: LinkedIn, business directories, the company's social media.

5. Is the content sufficient?

Being crawled does not guarantee being indexed. In the Pages report, the statuses "Discovered – currently not indexed" or "Crawled – currently not indexed" mean that Google knows the page but has chosen not to add it to its index, for now.

The usual causes: very short pages, pages that are almost identical to each other, or pages with no value of their own (empty pages, tag pages, forgotten test pages).

How to fix

Expand the useful pages, merge the ones that repeat each other, and delete or exclude from the index those that bring nothing to a visitor.

6. Does Google see the same page as you? (rendering, URL Inspection)

On some websites, the content is not in the HTML sent by the server: it is built in the browser by JavaScript. Google can usually run this JavaScript, but it can fail or delay indexing.

How to check

In the URL Inspection tool, run Test live URL, then view the tested page: the screenshot and the rendered HTML show what Google actually sees. Also check that the content is not reserved for logged-in visitors, and that the server does not return intermittent errors.

How to fix

Make sure the main content is present in the HTML from the server. This is the case for a standard WordPress site or a Next.js site whose pages are generated in advance.

7. A manual action or a security issue?

This is the rarest cause, but the most drastic. In Search Console, the Security & Manual Actions section reports whether someone on Google's team has penalized the site, or whether the site has been hacked (for example, spam pages added without your knowledge).

How to fix

Fix the reported problem (cleaning up the hack, removing the practices in question), then request a review from the same report.

After the fix: request indexing and monitor

Once the cause is fixed:

1. Request indexing of the main pages with the URL Inspection tool.
2. Follow the Pages report week after week: the number of indexed pages should increase.
3. Keep an eye on the Performance report: the first impressions usually appear for your company's name, then for your services.

If your pages are indexed but only appear for your company's name, the problem is no longer indexing but ranking: that is the subject of the four-step diagnosis and of SEO work. And if you would rather have an outside eye run these checks for you, that is the starting point of the website audit.