Why is my website not showing on Google?

Search for your business on Google and your website isn't there. Or it's there for your name and nowhere for "electrician Falkirk". Those are two different problems with different fixes, and most of what you'll read mixes them up, usually on the way to selling you something.

Google describes search in three stages: finding a page, storing it in its index, and showing it for a search. In its own words, not all pages make it through each stage. A site that's missing has dropped out at one of them, and the first job is working out which.

One cause takes about 30 seconds to rule out. Our free health check reads the page you give it, your server's response and your robots.txt file, and says if any of them tells search engines not to list the site, which keeps it off Google altogether. We sell websites, so take it knowing that. You don't need to give an email address to see the result.

The same report covers how quickly the site shows its main content on a phone, using Google's own test, and whether it fits a phone screen. It checks whether a customer can find your number near the top and tap it to call you. And it checks whether the site is secure, and gives Google a title, a description, the details of a local business and a link to your Business Profile. It says what's working as well as what isn't. It can't tell you whether Google has stored your site, because only Google knows that. The next section is how to find out.

First, find out which problem you've got

Type this into Google on your phone, with your own address in place of the example:

site:yourbusiness.co.uk

If your pages come back, Google has your site, and the problem is further along: it's showing other results first for what you searched. That's the second half of this post.

If nothing comes back, Google probably hasn't stored the site. Treat it as a quick look rather than an answer, because Google says a site: search doesn't always list every page it holds. The version with "www" and the version without can give different results, so try both.

The definite answer is Search Console, Google's tool for site owners, which is free. You prove the site is yours: a record where your domain is registered, a file on the site, or a tag on the home page. Then you put your address into its URL Inspection tool. "URL is on Google" means the page is stored and can appear in results, though Google adds that it isn't guaranteed to. On Wix, Squarespace or WordPress, Google warns that some of those methods may not be open to you. Search your builder's help pages for "Search Console".

If Google hasn't got your site

Google's own page on getting into its results gives the usual reasons: the site is new, nothing links to it, it's hard for Google to read, or Google hit an error trying to look at it. For that last one, Google says the most common causes are a login page or the site blocking Google. Both are usually a setting rather than anything technical.

A setting telling search engines to stay away. Every website builder has one, and some start with it on:

• Squarespace makes every new site private, and a private site can't be found or indexed. The setting is under site availability, and a password on the home page has the same effect. Squarespace also says search engines won't find a site that's on a trial, expired or cancelled.
• Wix has a toggle called "Let search engines index your site" in its SEO settings. It needs to be on.
• WordPress, the version you install yourself, has a box under Settings, Reading, called "Discourage search engines from indexing this site". It needs to be clear.
• WordPress.com shows a new site as "Coming Soon" until it's made public, and puts a site back to Coming Soon when its paid plan runs out.

The check that catches most of it. Open your site in a private or incognito window on your phone, which is Google's own suggestion. If you see a password box, a coming-soon page or a login, so does Google. It won't go past a page that asks for a login.

An instruction not to index. A page can carry a line in its code telling search engines to leave it out, known as noindex. Google says it drops a page like that from its results entirely, whatever links to it. Take the line out and Google may not look again for months. Google has been asked about a site that dropped out of its results after moving to a new platform. Answering in 2024, Google's John Mueller said his guess was that the new site was somehow blocking search engines.

Not every page. Search Console sometimes files pages under "Crawled - currently not indexed" or "Discovered - currently not indexed". Google says not to expect every page on a site to be indexed, only to make sure the key ones are. On a five-page trade site, the key one is the home page.

If your website is new

A site that went live this week may not be on Google yet, and that doesn't mean anything is wrong with it. Google finds pages mainly by following links from pages it already knows. Its guidance says it can take a few weeks to notice a new site. The advice is to wait a while and get linked from other sites. Any page that already exists and links to yours helps: a directory listing, your scheme's register entry, a local business that lists you. Google's starter guide also suggests putting the address on business cards, letterheads and posters. For a trade, add the van.

Asking Google to look. In Search Console's URL Inspection you can ask for a page to be indexed. Google's pages say indexing typically takes a day or so but can take much longer. Crawling, they say, can take a few days to a few weeks. Asking again for the same page won't make it quicker, and there's a daily limit on requests. On a hosted platform, Google says, the platform usually tells search engines about new pages itself. Its examples are Blogger and WordPress.

A sitemap won't force the issue either. Google says one helps it discover pages but doesn't guarantee they're indexed. It also says a site of about 500 pages or fewer may not need one. Your builder has probably made one already, and if you want to hand it to Google, Search Console has a Sitemaps report for that.

If Google has it, but you can't find it

Then it's about what you searched for.

Search your business name. If your site comes up, Google has it and connects it to you. That's the search a customer makes after someone has recommended you, and it's the one a website is best at.

Search your trade and your town, and it changes. A search like that usually puts a map of local businesses first, and those listings come from Google Business Profiles, not from websites. Google says local results are mainly based on relevance, distance and popularity, and that there's no way to pay for a better local ranking. Setting a profile up has its own walkthrough. Why the map and the ordinary results are different competitions is in the post on whether to have a site at all.

Below the map are the ordinary results, which is where a website competes. Google's own starter guide points to three things a small site can do for nothing:

• Have a page about the thing they searched. Google says a page it has stored may still not show because what's on it isn't relevant to the search. A site that says "electrical services" and nothing more won't come up for "EICR Stirling". A page about EICRs that says where you do them might.
• Give each page a title that says what and where. Google suggests a title can include the business name and where it is. It's the headline people see in the results.
• Write words, not pictures of words. Google asks for text, not just images or video. A services list that's part of a banner image can't be read as text.

Pages for each town. A common piece of advice is a page for every town you cover. Google's spam policies give an example of what they call doorway abuse: "pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page". They also name pages so similar to each other that they're closer to search results than to a site. Read together, the examples are pages that exist to catch a search and pass people on. A page per town is only worth having if it says something real about the work there.

A keyword in the domain name won't do it. Buying electricianfalkirk.co.uk to come up for that search doesn't work. Google's guide says keywords in a domain name have hardly any effect beyond appearing in breadcrumbs.

Speed and phones

Google reads the phone version of your site to decide what to store and how to rank it, and finished the switch in October 2023. So a site that shows a shrunken desktop page on a phone, or takes ten seconds to show anything, has a real problem. Mostly it's a problem for the person waiting.

Google's own position is more measured than the people selling speed fixes tend to suggest. It says its ranking systems use Core Web Vitals, its measures of how quickly a page loads, responds and settles. It also says it always tries to show the most relevant content, even when the experience is poor. Speed won't make up for a page about the wrong thing, and a slow page about the right thing can still show.

To check yours, run your address through Google's free PageSpeed Insights from a computer. Google's target is for the main content to appear within 2.5 seconds. A quiet site often doesn't get enough visits for real-world figures, in which case you'll see only the test Google runs itself.

Google's Mobile-Friendly Test, which older advice still sends people to, was retired in December 2023, and Google now points to its Lighthouse tool instead. The simplest test is still free: open your site on your phone and try to ring yourself from it.

What won't help

• Paying Google. Google says it doesn't accept payment to crawl a site more often or rank it higher, and adds: "If anyone tells you otherwise, they're wrong." Adverts are a separate, paid space.
• A promise of first place. Google's page on hiring help with this says no one can guarantee a number one ranking on Google.
• Asking for the same page again and again. It won't get crawled any faster.
• Paying someone to get you listed. Google says it costs nothing to get a page into its results.

Where grafter.ly fits

We sell websites, at £15 a month. If you'd rather start again, every page on a site of ours has a title, a description and the local-business details Google reads, and it's built to be used on a phone. None of that puts a page first. It means Google can find the page and read it, which is the part you can control. The website side is here.

If you'd rather keep the site you have, the health check is on its own page too, at /websites/health-check.

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Sources. Google Search Central on how search works, the site: operator, getting on Google, asking Google to recrawl, noindex, technical requirements, sitemaps, the SEO starter guide, whether you need an SEO, page experience, Core Web Vitals, mobile-first indexing and its completion (31 October 2023), the retirement of the Mobile-Friendly Test (1 December 2023), spam policies and Search Office Hours, April 2024; PageSpeed Insights; Search Console Help on what Search Console is, verifying a site, URL Inspection and the Page indexing report; Google Business Profile Help on local ranking; and the builders' own help pages: Wix, Squarespace on sites search engines can't find and site availability, WordPress, and WordPress.com on site visibility and coming-soon pages. All checked 14 October 2026. Google changes its tools and its wording often, so check its own pages before acting on anything here.