Before you start suspecting SEO, settle one thing: does Google even know your site exists. Those are two completely different problems that people usually throw into one bag. “My site is not showing up in Google” can mean the search engine does not have it in its database at all - or that it does, but is not showing it for the phrases you care about. The first is usually fixed in a few days and often with one click. The second is months of work.
In this text I go through the causes in order, from the simplest to the most labour-intensive, in the order I check them myself. The broader context I cover on the SEO page.
The opening test: is the site in the index at all
Type site:yourdomain.com into Google - with the colon, no space, replacing “yourdomain.com” with your own address. That query shows only subpages from your domain that Google holds in its database.
The result decides which path to take:
- Zero results - the site is not in the index. That is a technical problem or a matter of time, not “weak SEO”. Read on.
- A few results, but important subpages missing - part of the site is being blocked or Google judged it low value
- Everything is there and you still cannot see yourself for your phrases - a completely different story, which I cover at the end
The site: query is purely technical - the answer does not depend on who you are or where you are sitting. So treat it as a yes-or-no test: the site is in Google’s database or it is not.
The site is new - Google needs time
A new domain does not appear in results overnight. Google has to find it, visit it, process the content and decide who to show it to. With a brand new site nobody links to yet, that is usually a matter of a few days to a few weeks.
You can speed the process up. Connect Google Search Console, confirm the domain is yours and submit a sitemap - a file listing all your addresses that tells the search engine what to visit. Most systems, WordPress included, generate it automatically. In Search Console you can also paste a specific address into the field at the top and request indexing.
What helps: if the site has been up for three months, the sitemap is submitted and the index is still empty - it is no longer a matter of time. Move on to the next points: either something is blocking it, or Google knows the addresses and decided they were not worth fetching. You will see both in Search Console.
The most common cause: you are blocking Google yourself without knowing it
It sounds absurd, but it is number one among the problems I run into. WordPress has one unassuming switch: in the reading settings, the option “Discourage search engines from indexing this site”. It gets ticked while the site is being built, so the unfinished version does not reach the results - and very often nobody unticks it afterwards. The site goes live, the client is delighted, and search engines have a clear message: do not look here.
The second variant of the same mistake is a noindex tag hard-coded into the site or set in an SEO plugin - sometimes globally, sometimes only on selected page types. The third is a robots.txt file that, instead of letting crawlers in, closes the door with a Disallow: / rule. You can see that file by typing yourdomain.com/robots.txt in the browser.
The fourth - the most common on sites built “as a trial” - is password protection. A test version standing behind a login or a password box is a wall to Google: the crawler gets an “access denied” response and moves on.
All four can be checked in a quarter of an hour and all four are fixed straight away. Once the block is lifted, request reindexing in Search Console - do not wait for Google to come back on its own.
A rebuild or a move that lost the URLs
The second classic: the site was in Google and disappeared after a refresh. It is almost always about addresses. The new site has a different link structure, the old addresses stop existing and everything Google knew about them goes in the bin. The remedy is 301 redirects - permanent signposts saying “this address moved here”, which carry the subpage’s standing in the search engine over to the new one as well. I set them out more fully in the piece on migration without losing rankings.
A domain change, or a move from http to https without a complete set of redirects, works the same way. Google then treats the new version as a completely new address.
There is also the reverse variant, which can catch you out: the test version of the site stays in the index instead of the real one. It happens when the site was built at a temporary address, nobody blocked it after launch, and the search engine now has two almost identical copies. It picks one - not necessarily the one you care about. What to move, in what order, when changing servers I cover in the piece on moving a website to a new server.
Technical causes on the server side
If a crawler arrives at the site and finds an error, it simply leaves. A few such visits in a row and Google starts looking in less often, and during a longer outage subpages drop out of the index. So it is worth checking:
- Server errors - a site that regularly returns a 500 error or does not load at all eventually disappears from results; I take the causes apart in the piece on the 500 error in WordPress
- The SSL certificate - an expired certificate is a warning wall for the user and, for a crawler, an address that cannot be fetched securely; what to do then
- Response time - a very slow server means Google visits less often and fetches less; the order of fixes I describe in how to speed up a WordPress site
- Content loaded only by script - if the page is empty with JavaScript disabled, the search engine may see exactly the same thing
Search Console shows this outright. In the indexing report you will find the list of excluded addresses along with the reason: blocked by robots.txt, excluded by a noindex tag, redirected, treated as a duplicate, or discovered but not indexed. That last reason usually means Google knows the address but did not consider it worth fetching - and that is not a block to be lifted, it is a signal about the value of the content.
Malware and penalties - rarer, but they hurt most
Sometimes a site stops bringing anyone in because it has been infected. Google detects malicious code and flags the site as unsafe: a warning appears in the results and a red screen before entry. Traffic can drop to zero in a day, even though the rankings formally stand still. The signals to catch are a sudden fall in traffic to zero, strange subpages in the site: results and users complaining about redirects to unknown places. My full plan of action is in the pieces on detecting and removing malware and first aid for a hacked site.
A separate category is manual actions - a penalty imposed by a Google employee for breaking the rules, for example buying links or publishing content created purely for search engines. Information about it appears in Search Console, in the “Manual actions” tab. If there is nothing there, there is no penalty - and you can stop worrying about it.
The site is indexed and still does not show up in Google
The most common ending to this diagnosis looks like this: site: shows every subpage, Search Console is silent about errors, and the site still cannot be seen. That means the problem is not technical, it is the competition.
Check it with the simplest test: type your company name into Google. If the site pops up first, it is indexed and doing fine. It does not appear for phrases like “website Krakow” because dozens of firms are fighting over those phrases, have been doing it for years and have separate, extensive subpages written for them. You have one home page and a “Services” tab.
That is no longer a fault to be fixed, it is work to be done: content answering the real questions customers ask, a tidy site structure and patience measured in months. Start by measuring your starting point - I describe that in the piece on how to check your website ranking in Google - and the list of things to review is in the piece on what an SEO audit covers.
The order of checks in a nutshell
site:yourdomain.com- establish whether the site is in the index- Visibility settings in the site’s admin panel and the
robots.txtfile - whether you are blocking it yourself - Search Console - connection, sitemap, indexing report, manual actions
- 301 redirects, if the site was rebuilt or changed address
- Server errors, certificate, response time
- Only at the end, content and competition
That order is not accidental. Points one to three solve most “the site vanished from Google” reports and take one afternoon. Before anyone offers you a multi-month SEO retainer, it is worth going through them.
If you want it checked right away - as part of the free diagnosis I go through this list on your site and tell you outright at which point your site gets stuck.
Frequently asked questions
Why is my site not showing up in Google?
Most often for one of three reasons: it is too new and Google has not processed it yet, it has indexing blocked from the build phase, or the addresses changed in a rebuild without redirects. Start with the site:yourdomain.com query - if it returns nothing, the problem is technical, not an SEO one.
How long does it take for a new site to appear in Google? Usually from a few days to a few weeks. Submitting a sitemap in Search Console and requesting indexing for your most important subpages shortens that noticeably.
What do I do to get my site into Google?
Make sure nothing is blocking it (visibility settings, robots.txt, a password on the test site), connect Search Console, submit the sitemap and request indexing. After that it is a matter of content and time.
The site was in Google and disappeared - what happened? Three most common scenarios: a rebuild without 301 redirects, indexing accidentally blocked during work on the site, or an infection with malicious code. Search Console will show which one is your case.
Is it worth submitting the site to Google manually? Yes, with a new site and after larger changes - it is the fastest route. Submitting the same addresses daily achieves nothing; Google will come back at its own rhythm anyway.
Want your company to show up in Google and in ChatGPT answers? I work on technical SEO and AI visibility from the code side, not the reporting side. Tell me which questions matter to you and I will quote it.