Why isn't my website on Google?

Last updated 10 October 2026 · By the XKey team

First: is it really missing?

Type site:yourdomain.co.uk into Google. If you see a list of your pages, your site is indexed – it just isn't ranking for the words you tried, which is a different problem (see cause 8). If Google shows nothing at all, work through the causes below. The quickest way to test most of them at once is a free SEO check on your home page.

1. The site is very new

Google has to discover a site before it can index it. A brand-new domain with no links pointing at it can take anything from a few days to several weeks to appear. You can speed this up by adding the site to Google Search Console and submitting your sitemap – our Search Console guide walks through it.

2. A noindex tag is telling Google to stay away

This is the most common cause on sites that were built on a staging server. A <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> tag, or an X-Robots-Tag: noindex header, asks search engines not to list the page. In WordPress, check that Settings › Reading › Discourage search engines is unticked. XKey flags noindex as a critical problem.

3. robots.txt is blocking Googlebot

A single line – Disallow: / under User-agent: * – blocks the whole site. Paste your rules into the robots.txt tester and test your home page against Googlebot. Remember that robots.txt stops crawling, not indexing: a blocked page can still appear as a bare link with no description, which is rarely what you want.

4. The page returns an error

Pages that answer with a 404, 410 or 5xx status code are dropped from Google. So are pages Google thinks are "soft 404s" – they say 200 OK but look empty or like an error page. Our guide to broken links and redirects explains how to fix them.

5. The canonical tag points somewhere else

A canonical tag tells Google which address is the "real" version of a page. If every page on your site points its canonical at the home page, or at the old staging domain, Google will index that address instead of yours. Each page should normally point to itself.

6. There's not enough on the page

Google doesn't index everything it crawls. Pages with only a heading and a photo, or text copied from another site, are often crawled and then left out. In Search Console these show as "Crawled – currently not indexed". Write something genuinely useful – what you do, where, for whom, how much it costs and how to get in touch.

7. Google can't see the content

If your text only appears after JavaScript runs, or is inside images, Google may see an almost blank page. Most modern site builders are fine, but some single-page apps and old Flash-style templates are not. The SEO check reports the word count Google can actually read.

8. It's indexed but not ranking

If site: finds you but your name or service doesn't, you're competing with other pages. Make sure your title and H1 say exactly what you do and where, set up a Google Business Profile if you serve local customers (see our local SEO checklist), and earn a few genuine links from local directories, suppliers and associations.

9. A manual action or security issue

Rarely, Google removes a site for spam or because it has been hacked. Search Console's Security & Manual actions section will tell you if this has happened and what to fix. Hacked sites often show strange pages in a site: search – Japanese text or pharmacy keywords are common signs.

Frequently asked questions

How long does it take for a new website to appear on Google?

Usually a few days to a few weeks. Submitting a sitemap in Google Search Console and getting even one link from an established site helps Google find it sooner.

Can I pay Google to index my website?

No. Indexing is free and can't be bought. Google Ads put you in the paid results, but they don't affect whether your pages are indexed or how they rank.

Why does my site show on Bing but not Google?

The two search engines crawl and index separately. Check Google Search Console's Pages report for the reason Google gives, and fix anything marked as an error.