Why is my website not showing in Google?
One common reason is a "noindex" instruction on the page, telling search engines not to list it. It is correct for private pages and a disaster for a home page. It is very often a leftover from the site being built in private, where the developer switched search engines off and forgot to switch them back on. In WordPress the setting is under Settings, Reading, "Discourage search engines from indexing this site".
Why it matters
A noindex tag is an instruction Google obeys absolutely. However good the content and however many links point to it, the page will be removed from the index and stay out until the tag is gone. Sites have gone live and spent months wondering why they get no traffic while the setting quietly blocked everything.
Other reasons a site does not show
- The site is new and Google has not found it yet; submit the sitemap in Search Console.
- robots.txt blocks the whole site with "Disallow: /".
- The site is only listed for its own name, which is normal at first; ranking for services takes time and content.
- A password or "coming soon" plugin is still active.
- The domain was previously used for spam and carries a penalty.
How to check
Our check looks for a robots meta tag or X-Robots-Tag header containing "noindex" on your home page. Searching Google for "site:yourdomain.co.uk" shows which of your pages it has indexed; if nothing appears, something is blocking it.
How to fix it
On WordPress, untick "Discourage search engines" under Settings, Reading, then check each page's settings in your SEO plugin, which can also set noindex per page. On other platforms look for a "hide from search engines" or "visibility" setting. Once the tag is gone, use the URL inspection tool in Google Search Console to request indexing; it can take a few days to a few weeks for the page to reappear.
Not sure how your own site does on this? Run the free check: it takes about twenty seconds and reports on this and thirty other things.