Why Google Isn't Indexing Your Website Pages, and How to Fix It
You've launched a new website or added new service pages, but when you search for them, nothing shows up. Before a page can rank, Google has to find it, read it and decide to keep it in its index. If any of those steps fails, the page is invisible, however good the content is.
This guide explains the most common technical reasons pages don't get indexed and what to check first.
Step 1: Confirm whether the page is indexed
Search Google for site:yourwebsite.com/page-address. If nothing appears, the page probably isn't indexed yet. A more reliable check is Google's free site-owner console, which shows each page's indexing status and the reason a page was left out.
New pages can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks to appear. If it's been longer, one of the issues below is likely.
Common reasons pages aren't indexed
1. The page is blocked from search engines. A single setting can tell search engines not to index a page. This is often switched on while a site is being built and then forgotten at launch. Check that your live pages don't carry a "noindex" instruction.
2. The site's crawl rules block it. Websites have a small rules file that tells search engines which areas they may visit. An overly broad rule can block whole sections, such as your blog or services folder.
3. There's no sitemap, or it's out of date. A sitemap lists the pages you want found. If it's missing, broken or doesn't include new pages, search engines have to discover them on their own, which is slower.
4. Nothing links to the page. Search engines follow links. A page that isn't linked from your menu, homepage or other pages is an "orphan" and is easy to miss.
5. The page duplicates another one. If two pages say nearly the same thing, or the same page opens at several addresses (with and without "www", for example), Google may index only one and ignore the rest.
6. The content only appears after scripts run. Some sites show text only after the browser loads extra code. Search engines can handle a lot of this, but pages that look empty on first load are riskier.
7. The page has very little content. Thin pages with a heading and one line of text may be crawled but not kept.
8. The page is slow or returns errors. Broken links, server errors and very slow pages make crawling harder.
A technical search set-up checklist
Use this list when launching a site or adding new pages:
- Live pages are allowed to be indexed.
- The crawl rules file doesn't block important sections.
- A sitemap exists, lists every important page and updates when pages are added.
- The sitemap is submitted in Google's site-owner console.
- Each page has one main address, and alternative versions point to it.
- Every important page is linked from at least one other page.
- Each page has a unique title and a short description.
- Pages load reasonably fast on mobile.
- Broken links and error pages are fixed.
After you've fixed things
Request indexing for your most important pages in the console, then give it time. Check the indexing report every couple of weeks. Being indexed doesn't mean ranking first, but it's the step everything else depends on.
Get help with technical search set-up
Apne Technologies sets up and checks the technical basics so search engines can find and read your site. Learn more at apnewebsite.com, or message us on WhatsApp to talk about your business.