--- title: "Why Your Website Doesn’t Show Up on Google (and How to Diagnose It)" description: "A step-by-step self-diagnosis for a site that isn’t showing up on Google: indexing, robots/noindex, canonicals, thin content, schema, and speed." source: https://sukisong.com/guides/why-your-website-doesnt-show-up-on-google updated: 2026-07-09 --- # Why Your Website Doesn’t Show Up on Google (and How to Diagnose It) You built a site. You search your business name and get nothing — or you are on page four. Before you pay anyone (including me), here is how to diagnose it yourself, in order, from the most common cause to the least. Most "invisible site" problems are one of the first three, and those are free to fix. Work through these in sequence. Do not skip to the exotic stuff — the boring causes are boring because they are so common. ## Step 1 — Is it even indexed? Go to Google and search `site:yourdomain.com` (your real domain, no space after the colon). This asks Google to list every page it has stored from your site. - Pages come back — you are indexed. Your problem is *ranking*, not visibility. Keep reading from Step 3. - Nothing comes back — Google does not have your site at all. That is a bigger, different problem than ranking low, and it is almost always Step 2. - Only a few pages come back — you are partially indexed; something is keeping the rest out. *Indexed* means Google has your page in its database. *Ranking* is where it places you for a search. You cannot rank for anything until you are in the index, so fix indexing first. ## Step 2 — Are you accidentally blocking Google? The single most common own-goal is a leftover `noindex` tag or a `Disallow: /` carried over from a staging site. Two 30-second checks: - View the page source (right-click → View Source) and search for `noindex`. If you find ``, you are actively telling Google to stay out. Remove it. - Open `yourdomain.com/robots.txt`. If you see `Disallow: /`, you are blocking your whole site from crawlers. That line should not be there for a live site. Also check response headers for an `X-Robots-Tag: noindex` — a sneakier version set at the server instead of in the HTML. If any of these are present, that is very likely your entire answer. ## Step 3 — Where do your canonical tags point? A `rel=canonical` tag tells Google which URL is the "real" version of a page. A common template bug points every page's canonical at the homepage — which tells Google your interior pages are duplicates of the home page and can be dropped from the index. In the page source, find `` and confirm the URL matches *that page's own* address. If every page canonicalizes to `/`, that is your bug. ## Step 4 — Is there anything to rank? Google will not rank a page that says nothing. Three sentences and a stock photo is not a page. If your service pages are a headline and a "Contact us" button, there is no text for Google to match against what people search. You need real, specific, useful content on a URL that maps to an actual query — a page about "bookkeeping for restaurants in Austin" if that is what you do and what people type. Thin, generic pages are indexed and then ignored. ## Step 5 — Can Google tell what the page is? No `

`, headings out of order, no structured data — and the crawler struggles to tell what the page is about or who published it. Clean semantic HTML and Schema.org markup give it an unambiguous answer. This is also the exact layer that decides whether AI assistants can cite you — the [AI-citation stack](/guides/how-this-site-gets-cited-by-ai) is built on the same foundation as good technical SEO. Fix it once, get both. ## Step 6 — Is it fast, on a phone? Slow, layout-shifting, or unusable-on-mobile pages get suppressed, especially for competitive searches. Run your URL through Google PageSpeed Insights and look at the mobile score and the Core Web Vitals (loading, interactivity, visual stability). If it is deep in the red, that is a ranking drag worth fixing. ## Step 7 — Is it just too new? New domains take time. It is normal to wait days to a few weeks to get indexed after Google can first crawl you, and longer to rank competitively — ranking also depends on content depth and other sites linking to you. If you launched last week and Steps 1–6 check out, the honest answer may be: submit your sitemap in Google Search Console, earn a few real links, and wait. ## The 10-minute self-audit - Search `site:yourdomain.com` — are you indexed at all? - View source — any `noindex`? Check `/robots.txt` for `Disallow: /`. - Canonical tags point at each page’s own URL, not the homepage? - Do your key pages have real, specific content — not three sentences? - One `

` per page, sensible headings, some Schema.org markup? - Decent mobile speed / Core Web Vitals in PageSpeed Insights? - Sitemap submitted in Search Console, and has enough time passed? Most stuck sites are on Step 1, 2, or 3 — and those cost nothing but attention. If you have worked through all seven and you are still invisible, or you would simply rather not touch the code, that is what I do. That is [Get Found](/sites#getfound-h), from $3,000 — technical SEO, structured data, llms.txt, crawler permissions, and speed, on the site you already have. Not sure which step you are stuck on? Book a 15-minute call below and we will diagnose it together — no pitch. **Q: What’s the difference between "not indexed" and "not ranking"?** Indexed means Google has your page in its database at all. Ranking is where it places you for a given search. If site:yourdomain.com returns nothing, you have an indexing problem — fix that first, because ranking is moot until you are in the index. **Q: How long should a brand-new site take to show up?** Days to a few weeks to get indexed once Google can crawl you and you have submitted a sitemap in Search Console; longer to rank competitively, because that also depends on content depth and inbound links. If it has been months and you are not in the index at all, something is blocking the crawler — go back to Step 2. **Q: I show up for my business name but nothing else. Is that bad?** It is normal early on. Ranking for your own brand name is easy; ranking for what you do — "electrician in Denver" — is the real game and needs real content plus authority. It usually means your pages are indexed but too thin or unfocused for those searches. **Q: Does getting cited by AI help me show up on Google?** They are related but separate. The same clean, structured, crawlable foundation feeds both, which is why I build SEO and AI-optimization as one system instead of bolting one on later. The [teardown of this site’s stack](/guides/how-this-site-gets-cited-by-ai) walks through the shared foundation.