Website not showing up on Google

You search for your business name and your site is not there. For a new site this is normal for a few weeks. For an old site that vanished, something changed.

What to do, in order

  1. Search site:yourdomain.com. If you get results, you are indexed and the problem is ranking, not visibility. If you get none, keep going.
  2. Look for a noindex tag. View the page source and search for "noindex". WordPress has a box in Settings, Reading called "Discourage search engines". Untick it. Many site builders hide the site from search until you publish or pay.
  3. Check robots.txt. Open yourdomain.com/robots.txt. Disallow: / under User-agent: * blocks Google from the whole site.
  4. Check the site loads for everyone. A password page, a coming-soon plugin or an expired SSL certificate stops Google too.
  5. Tell Google the site exists. Add it to Google Search Console, submit your sitemap, and use URL Inspection to request indexing of the home page.
  6. For a business name search, add a Google Business Profile. It often shows before the website does.

If it still fails, send me the address and I will tell you which step is broken.

Want the rest of your site checked after it is back? Run a free 40-point check at tinkeraudit.com.