Why Is My Website Not Showing Up on Google?

By Neha·Published October 1, 2026·Updated October 15, 2026

You search for your own business and the website you paid for is nowhere. Your Instagram page shows up. Your Justdial listing shows up. The website does not. It is a horrible feeling, and it usually comes with a worry that something is badly broken.

Most of the time it is not. If you have been typing "website not showing on Google" into Google itself, the cause is nearly always one of a short list of reasons, and you can work out which one in about fifteen minutes. This guide lists those reasons from the most common to the least, shows you how to tell which one is yours, and gives the fix for each.

Short answer: First check whether Google has your site at all by searching site:yourdomain.in. If nothing appears, the site is either too new, or something is telling Google to stay away: a noindex tag, a robots.txt block, a canonical pointing elsewhere or an error page. The free indexability checker rules out most of these in seconds. If your pages do appear in the site: search but not when you search for your service, your problem is ranking, not indexing.

First, find out which problem you have

Before you fix anything, separate two problems that feel the same but are completely different.

Google works in three stages. It discovers a page, usually by following a link or reading your sitemap. It crawls the page, which means its robot, called Googlebot, visits and reads it. Then it decides whether to index the page, which means saving it in Google's list of pages it can show. Only indexed pages can appear in results.

Now do this test. Open Google and type site: followed by your domain with no space, for example site:jaipurmithai.in.

• Nothing appears. Google has not indexed your site. Work through the checklist below.
• Some pages appear, but an important one is missing. That one page has a problem. Check it on its own.
• Your pages appear, but not when you search "sweet shop in Jaipur". Your site is indexed. It just does not rank yet for that search. That is a different job, and our guide on what to check when you are indexed but not ranking covers it.

The site: search is a rough check, not a full list, but it is good enough to tell you which road you are on.

The checklist: reasons a website is not on Google

Here are the causes in rough order of how often small business sites run into them. Each one has a quick test.

The sections below take each one in turn.

1. The website is simply too new

A brand-new site with no links pointing at it is like a new shop in a lane nobody walks down. Google has no path to it yet. Google does not promise how long discovery takes; for a small new site it can be a few days or a few weeks.

Fix: add the site to Google Search Console (free), submit your sitemap and request indexing for the home page. Put your website address on your Google Business Profile, Instagram and Facebook pages and directory listings, so Google finds a link to follow. Our Google Search Console guide walks through the setup.

2. A noindex tag was left on after the site was built

A noindex tag is one hidden line in a page's code that tells Google "do not show this page in search results". Developers often switch it on while building a site so half-finished pages stay hidden, and then forget to switch it off at launch. It can also be sent by the server as an X-Robots-Tag header, which you cannot see on the page at all.

How to tell: paste the page address into the free indexability checker. It shows the robots meta tag, the X-Robots-Tag header, the canonical and the status code, and tells you plainly whether anything is stopping Google listing the page.

Fix: on WordPress, go to Settings, then Reading, and untick "Discourage search engines from indexing this site". Then check the per-page setting in your SEO plugin for your important pages. On Wix, Shopify and other builders, look for a "hide from search engines" or SEO visibility setting.

3. robots.txt is blocking Google

robots.txt is a small text file at yoursite.in/robots.txt that tells search engine robots which parts of the site they may read. The dangerous version is two lines long:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

That single slash blocks the whole site. Like noindex, it is often left over from the building stage.

How to tell: paste your robots.txt and a page address into the robots.txt tester. It tells you whether Googlebot may read the page and which line decides. Note that the indexability checker does not read robots.txt, because it is a site-wide file; you need both checks. Our robots.txt guide explains what a healthy file looks like.

Fix: remove the blocking Disallow line, or ask your developer to.

4. The canonical tag points to a different page

A canonical tag tells Google which address is the "official" version of a page. If your service page says its official version is your home page, Google will usually show the home page instead and leave the service page out. This often happens when a theme sets one canonical for every page by mistake.

How to tell: the indexability checker shows the canonical and warns you when it points somewhere else. The canonical tag checker gives a closer look.

Fix: each normal page should name itself as canonical. Our guide to canonical tags and duplicate content explains when a different canonical is deliberate and when it is a mistake.

5. The page shows an error, or sits behind a password

If a page answers with an error code (a 404 "not found" or a 500 "server error"), Google will not keep it in its index. A site still behind a staging password, or a "coming soon" plugin, looks to Google like a login box with nothing behind it.

How to tell: the status code row in the indexability checker should say 200. Open the site in a private browser window where you are not logged in, and see what a stranger sees.

Fix: fix the broken page or the server problem, and remove any password or maintenance mode from the live site.

6. Nothing links to the page

Google finds most pages by following links. A page that is not in your menu, not linked from any other page and not in your sitemap may simply never be found.

How to tell: use the sitemap checker to see whether the page is listed in your sitemap and whether the sitemap is full of old or broken addresses. Then check whether your home page or menu links to it.

Fix: link to the page from a relevant page on your own site and make sure your sitemap lists it. Our guide to XML sitemaps covers the details.

7. Google found the page but chose not to index it

This is the one that frustrates people most, because nothing is technically wrong. In Search Console you may see:

• Discovered, currently not indexed: Google knows the page exists but has not read it yet. On a small site this often clears with time and a few internal links.
• Crawled, currently not indexed: Google read the page and decided not to list it for now. This usually points to the page itself: very little text, text copied from elsewhere, or a page almost identical to another one on your site.

Fix: make the page worth listing. A service page with two lines and a phone number gives Google nothing to work with. Explain the service, who it is for, the rough price, what happens on the day and the areas you cover, in your own words.

8. The site moved and the old addresses were not redirected

If you moved from http to https, from one domain to another, or rebuilt the site with new page addresses, Google may still hold the old addresses while the new ones wait in line. If the old ones now show errors, you can drop out of results for a while.

Fix: add 301 redirects (permanent forwarding from an old address to a new one) for every old address. Our guide on fixing broken links and redirects shows how.

There is also a rare ninth cause: a manual action, where a person at Google has penalised the site for breaking its spam rules. Search Console's Manual actions page tells you. For an ordinary small business site this is very unlikely, so check it last.

How to check, step by step

Here is the order to work in. It takes about fifteen minutes for a small site.

1. Run the site: search for your domain and note which important pages are missing.
2. Paste each missing page into the indexability checker. Look for noindex in either row, a canonical pointing elsewhere, or a status code other than 200.
3. Test robots.txt with the robots.txt tester for the same pages.
4. Run a free website audit if you want the whole site checked at once. It reads up to 25 pages free, checks robots.txt, your sitemap and noindex tags along with titles, speed and phone-friendliness, and puts the most important fix at the top.
5. Ask Google directly. If you have Search Console, sign in to Upgrowly and use the Google Index Checker. It connects to your own Search Console with read-only permission, asks Google whether each page is indexed, and gives the reason in plain words for any page that is not. It only works for sites you have verified as yours; Upgrowly never scrapes Google's results.
6. Fix what you found, then request indexing for the home page and main service pages using URL Inspection in Search Console.
7. Wait, then check again in a week or two. Requesting indexing over and over does not speed things up.

A worked example: a sweet shop in Jaipur

Here is a made-up but very typical case. Meena runs a sweet shop in Jaipur and had a new website built before Diwali. Three weeks after launch, searching her shop's name showed her Google Maps listing and her Instagram, but not the website.

The site: search returned nothing. She pasted her home page into the indexability checker and the robots meta tag row said noindex, nofollow. Her developer had built the site on WordPress with "Discourage search engines" ticked and never unticked it.

She unticked the box, checked robots.txt was clean, submitted the sitemap her SEO plugin had already made, and requested indexing for the home page and her three main pages: sweets, namkeen and wedding orders. The fix took twenty minutes. The pages started appearing over the following days, as Google came back to read them.

Her next question was why "sweet shop in Jaipur" still did not show her site. That is the ranking question, and it has different answers.

What to do this week

• Run the site: search for your domain and write down which important pages are missing.
• Check those pages with the indexability checker and the robots.txt tester.
• Make sure no "discourage search engines" or "hide from search" setting is switched on.
• Add your site to Google Search Console, submit your sitemap and request indexing for your key pages.
• Put your website link on your Google Business Profile and social pages.
• If your pages are indexed but not ranking, move on to the on-page and local work instead.

Frequently asked questions

How long does it take for a new website to show up on Google?

Google does not promise a time, and it does not promise to index every page. For a new small business site, a few days to a few weeks is common. Submitting a sitemap, requesting indexing and getting a few links from places Google already visits, such as your Google Business Profile, all help Google find you sooner.

Do I need to pay someone to submit my website to Google?

No. Everything needed is free: Google Search Console, a sitemap and a request for indexing. Be wary of anyone selling "Google submission" as a service. What matters is removing anything that blocks Google and making your pages useful.

Why does my business show on Google Maps but not my website?

Your Google Business Profile and your website are separate. The Maps listing comes from your profile; your website has to be crawled and indexed on its own. Check the website for a noindex tag or a robots.txt block, and make sure the website link on your profile is correct. If the Maps listing itself is missing, see why a business is not showing on Google Maps.

My website was on Google and now it has disappeared. What happened?

Look at what changed recently. A redesign that switched on noindex or a robots.txt block, a move to a new domain or to https without redirects, or a hosting problem that made the site unreachable are the usual causes. Search Console's page indexing report and Manual actions page will usually point to the reason.

Does robots.txt stop Google indexing a page?

Not reliably. robots.txt stops Google reading a page, but if other sites link to it Google can still list the address without a description. To keep a page out of results, use a noindex tag and leave the page readable so Google can see the instruction.