"We are not on Google" almost always turns out to be one of two completely different problems, with completely different fixes. Either Google does not have your pages at all, or it has them and is ranking something else above you.
Ten minutes of checking saves weeks of fixing the wrong thing.
Check properly, in Search Console
The site: search is a smoke test. Google itself notes that the operator does
not necessarily return every URL it has indexed, so do not conclude much from
one missing page.
The definitive answer is the URL Inspection tool in Google Search Console. Paste any URL from your site and read the verdict:
- "URL is on Google" — indexed, and eligible to appear. Eligible is not the same as visible: Google is explicit that being on Google does not guarantee you will be in the results for anything.
- "URL is not on Google" — not indexed, and the Page indexing section below the verdict says why.
Use Test live URL to check the page as it is right now, rather than as it was when Google last crawled it, and Request indexing once you have fixed something. There is a daily limit on those requests, and submitting one does not guarantee indexing.
The technical blockers, with what each one means
These are the statuses Search Console's page indexing report gives, in rough order of how often they turn out to be the culprit on a small business site.
| Status | What it actually means | The fix |
|---|---|---|
| URL marked 'noindex' | A tag on the page tells Google to stay out — usually left over from a staging site | Remove the noindex tag, then request indexing |
| URL blocked by robots.txt | Crawling is disallowed, often a whole directory | Fix the rule; note blocking is not a reliable way to keep a page out of results |
| Discovered — currently not indexed | Google knows the URL but has not crawled it, often because of expected server load | Improve server response, reduce crawl waste, link to the page internally |
| Crawled — currently not indexed | Crawled, then judged not worth indexing | Improve the page and its internal links; it may be indexed later |
| Duplicate without user-selected canonical | Two pages look the same and you have not said which is primary | Set a canonical, or consolidate the pages |
| Duplicate, Google chose different canonical | You nominated one; Google preferred another | Strengthen the signals — internal links, sitemap, canonical consistency |
| Page with redirect | The URL redirects, so the target is what matters | Nothing, unless the redirect is wrong |
| Soft 404 | A "not found" message returned with a 200 status | Return a real 404, or restore the content |
| Not found (404) | The page is gone | 301 to the replacement if it moved |
| Server error (5xx) | Your server failed during the crawl | A hosting problem, and the most urgent thing on this list |
| Blocked due to unauthorized request (401) / access forbidden (403) | Google is being asked to log in, or refused | Allow access to signed-out visitors and to Googlebot |
After fixing one, use Validate Fix in the report. Google recrawls the affected URLs and emails you the outcome; validation typically takes up to about two weeks, sometimes longer.
The non-technical reasons
If nothing above applies, the cause is usually one of these.
The site is simply new. Google's own guidance on getting a site on Google says it can take a few weeks to notice a new site. There is no way to buy your way past this, and no submission that makes it instant.
Nothing links to you. Google finds pages by following links. A brand new domain that no other site references, with no Search Console property and no profiles pointing at it, is genuinely hard to discover.
Pages inside the site link to nothing. An orphan page — one no other page on your own site links to — is the most common self-inflicted indexing problem. If your only route to a page is typing the URL, expect Google to treat it as unimportant. Every page on a site should be reachable from another page, and grouped with the pages it belongs with.
The content is thin or duplicated. Three near-identical location pages with the town name swapped are a classic "crawled — currently not indexed".
The page needs JavaScript to show anything. If the HTML arrives empty and the content is assembled in the browser, you are relying on a second rendering pass that may be delayed or incomplete. Server-rendered HTML removes the question. It is also why a rebuilt page is usually faster.
The site is slow enough to limit crawling. Speed is not only a ranking factor; a slow or unstable server reduces how much Google crawls. If pages take seconds to respond, that is the first thing to fix.
Do it in this order
- Verify the site in Search Console — DNS verification for the whole domain is the most durable.
- Inspect three URLs: the homepage, a service page, and one page you care about.
- Fix whatever the Page indexing report names, starting with noindex, robots.txt and 5xx errors.
- Submit an XML sitemap, and make sure it lists only canonical, indexable URLs.
- Fix your internal linking so every page has at least one contextual link pointing at it from a related page.
- Request indexing for the pages you fixed, then leave it alone for a fortnight.
Indexed, but still invisible
If site: returns your pages and you still get nothing, you have a ranking
problem — a different piece of work entirely.
Start with your own name. If you do not rank for your exact business name, the problem is usually brand-new-domain weakness or an entity confusion: other businesses with similar names, no consistent details across the web, no profiles corroborating you. Fixing that is entity work — one consistent description of the company everywhere it appears, stated in structured data and corroborated by profiles that agree with each other. The same groundwork decides whether an AI assistant can cite you.
If the searches you care about are local — "plumber near me", "accountant in …" — the map pack sits above the organic results and is a separate system. That is your Google Business Profile, and if you have not claimed and verified it, that is worth more than anything you will do to the website this month.
And if you rank for your name but nothing else, the honest answer is usually that no page on your site is genuinely about the thing you want to rank for, or that the competition for it is much stronger than the page you have. That is a content and structure problem, which is where technical and on-page SEO starts.
What good looks like
A site that gets indexed reliably has boring properties: server-rendered HTML, fast responses, one canonical URL per page, a sitemap that matches reality, and an internal linking structure where related pages point at each other rather than sitting in isolation.
We build sites that way by default and fix ones that are not. If you want to know which of the two problems you have, send us the domain — the written findings come back in three working days and cost nothing.
Frequently asked questions
- How long does it take for a new website to appear on Google?
- Google says it can take a few weeks to notice a new site or a change to an existing one, and it does not guarantee that any page will be indexed. Weeks, not days, is the right expectation for a brand new site with few links pointing at it.
- How do I check whether my site is indexed?
- Search site:yourdomain.com for a rough answer, then use the URL Inspection tool in Search Console for a definitive one. Google notes the site: operator does not necessarily return every indexed URL, so treat it as a smoke test rather than an inventory.
- Does submitting a URL to Google guarantee it gets indexed?
- No. Google states that requesting indexing does not guarantee a page will appear in the index, and there is a daily limit on requests. It is a nudge for a page you have just fixed, not a strategy.
- Why does Search Console say "Crawled — currently not indexed"?
- Google fetched the page and chose not to index it, usually a judgement about value: thin, near-duplicate, or a page nothing else on your site links to. It may index it later. The fix is to make the page worth indexing and link to it properly.
- My site is indexed but still gets no traffic. What now?
- Then this is a ranking problem, not an indexing one. Check you rank for your own brand name first, then look at whether the pages you have actually target what people search, and how strong the competition is for those terms.
- seo
- indexing
- search console
