An Honest Diagnosis.
If you’re asking this question, you’re probably in one of two situations:
You built or redesigned a website recently and expected it to show up — and it’s not. Or you’ve had a site for a while, you’ve been assuming it’s somewhere on Google, and you just looked and discovered it isn’t.
Either way, this isn’t a mystery with an unknown answer. There are a finite number of reasons a website doesn’t show up, and most of them are diagnosable in under an hour. Here’s what to look for.
First: What “Showing Up on Google” Actually Means
There’s a distinction worth making before we get into causes. Two different things could be happening:
1. Your site isn’t indexed at all — Google has never crawled it, or crawled it and decided not to include it in search results. If you go to Google and search site:yourdomain.com and get zero results, this is your situation.
2. Your site is indexed but isn’t ranking — Google knows your site exists, but it’s on page 4 or page 14 for the searches you care about. The site:yourdomain.com test returns results, but searching your target keywords doesn’t surface your site.
These are different problems with different solutions. Let’s cover both.
Reason 1: Your Site Is Set to “Discourage Search Engines”
This is more common than it sounds. WordPress has a setting — Settings → Reading → Search Engine Visibility — that allows you to block search engines from indexing your site. It’s meant to be used during development. The problem is that it sometimes stays checked after launch.
Some page builders and development setups also default to noindex settings that get left in place.
How to check:
- In WordPress: Settings → Reading → confirm “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” is UNCHECKED
- If you have an SEO plugin: open any page, look at the meta robots settings — confirm “Index” is selected, not “No Index”
- Search site:yourdomain.com in Google — if zero results, this setting is likely the culprit
Fix: Uncheck the setting, save, then request indexing via Google Search Console.
Reason 2: Google Search Console Isn’t Set Up
If GSC isn’t connected, you’re not submitting your sitemap to Google and you have no signal that Google should be paying attention to your site.
Google will eventually find and crawl most sites without a sitemap — but “eventually” can mean months. Submitting your sitemap to GSC tells Google what pages exist and signals that you want them indexed.
→ /gsc-setup-checklist/ — for the step-by-step GSC setup guide
Fix: Set up Google Search Console (it’s free), verify ownership, and submit your sitemap at yoursite.com/sitemap_index.xml.
Reason 3: Your Site Is New
Google doesn’t index new sites immediately. After a site launches or a sitemap is submitted, it typically takes 1–4 weeks for initial indexing and 3–6 months before rankings stabilize.
This doesn’t mean there’s nothing to do — actively requesting indexing via GSC’s URL Inspection tool speeds up the process. But if your site launched last week, some waiting is unavoidable.
Reason 4: Your Site Has No Inbound Links
Google discovers new content largely through links from other sites. A brand-new site with no external links pointing to it is harder for Google’s crawler to find and prioritize.
This doesn’t mean you need a complex link-building campaign. It means:
- Submit your site to Google Business Profile (creates a link from a trusted Google property)
- List your business in a few relevant directories (your chamber of commerce, industry associations)
- If you have any existing accounts or profiles that allow a website link — LinkedIn, professional associations, local business directories — add your URL
Each of these creates crawlable paths to your site and signals to Google that the site exists and is connected to real-world entities.
Reason 5: Your Content Doesn’t Target Anything Specific
This is the most common reason for the “I’m indexed but not ranking” situation.
Google ranks pages that specifically address what someone searched for. A homepage that says “We provide comprehensive professional services tailored to your needs” isn’t specifically addressing any search query. A page that says “Family Law Attorney in Greenville, SC — Divorce, Custody, and Estate Planning” is specifically addressing several queries.
The gap between those two is keyword targeting. Your pages need to include the specific terms people actually type into Google — in the title tag, in the H1, and naturally throughout the content.
→ /keyword-cluster-map/ — for a keyword strategy overview
If you’re trying to rank for “financial advisor Greenville SC” and your homepage doesn’t contain the phrase “financial advisor” or “Greenville” anywhere in the title or headings, Google has no signal to rank you for that query.
Fix: Start with your homepage. Your title tag should include what you do and where you do it. Then your H1 should reinforce that. Then your content should use natural variations of those terms throughout.
→ /the-5-most-common-website-mistakes-and-how-i-fix-them/ — on-page SEO basics
Reason 6: Your Site Has Technical Problems
Sometimes the issue is more technical: slow load times that exceed Google’s patience thresholds, duplicate content issues, broken sitemaps, crawl errors, or redirect loops.
These are diagnosable in GSC — the Coverage report shows indexing errors, and the Core Web Vitals report shows performance issues. If you have GSC connected and see a lot of errors in the Coverage report, that’s the place to start.
Common technical issues:
- Broken sitemap — Page returns errors when Google tries to read it
- Redirect loops — a URL redirects to itself or creates a chain that never resolves
- Crawl errors — pages returning 404 errors that Google expected to be there
- Slow load times — pages that take more than 3–4 seconds to load on mobile get deprioritized
The Short Version
If your site isn’t showing up on Google at all, check the indexing settings and GSC setup first — those are the fastest to fix.
If your site is indexed but not ranking, the most likely cause is that your pages don’t specifically target the terms people are actually searching for.
Either way, the diagnosis should come before the fix. The worst thing to do is start making changes without knowing which of these six issues is actually the problem.
Justin Merrell is the founder of Ghost Runner Creative Services, a web design and development practice based in Greenville, SC. He has 25 years of experience in marketing and advertising and has been building professional websites for 16 years — for professional services firms nationwide including law offices, medical practices, financial advisors, consultants, and construction companies. Every project is handled directly. No subcontractors, no account managers, no handoffs.
