Sharon Martin8 min read

Google Search Console for Small Business: Find Out Why You're Not on Google

Your site isn't on Google, or it's buried on page four. Here's how to find out which problem you have, using a site: search and Google's free Search Console, and what to do about each.

You search for your business, or for the service you sell in your own town, and your website isn't there. Or it's there, but on page four. You built the pages and hit publish, and nothing happened.

There are only a few reasons this happens, and Google will tell you which one applies to you, for free, through a tool called Google Search Console. This post shows you how to work out which problem you have and what to do about each.

The quick answer

  1. Search Google for site:yourdomain.com. If nothing comes up, Google hasn't indexed your site yet.
  2. Set up Google Search Console and verify you own the site.
  3. Submit your sitemap under Indexing > Sitemaps.
  4. Paste your most important page's address into the search bar at the top of Search Console. If it says the page isn't on Google, the report tells you why.
  5. If your pages are indexed but nobody finds them, use Performance > Search results to see what you do show up for, and start there.

Diagnose: which problem do you have?

Go to Google and type site: followed by your domain, with no spaces: site:yourdomain.com. Google's SEO Starter Guide recommends this check: "If you see results pointing to your site, you're in the index."

  • No results at all. Google hasn't indexed the site. Either it's new, or something is blocking Google. Go to "Check indexing" below.
  • Some pages, but not the ones you care about. Those pages aren't indexed. Same section.
  • Your pages are there, but you don't show up when you search for your service. You're indexed but not ranking. Go to "Find out what you do show up for" below.
  • You were showing up and suddenly aren't. Check "Manual actions and security issues" first.

Set up Search Console

Search Console is, in Google's words, "a tool from Google that can help anyone with a website to understand how they are performing on Google Search". It doesn't cost anything.

It's different from Google Analytics. Analytics tells you what people do once they're on your site. Search Console tells you how you appear in Google before anyone clicks: which searches you showed up for, how often, and whether people clicked. If nobody can find you, Search Console is where the answer is.

Verify that the site is yours

Google makes you prove ownership first. Go to search.google.com/search-console, click Add property, and pick one of two types:

  • Domain covers your whole domain, including www and non-www versions. Google's verification help says a DNS record is "the only way to verify a Domain property": you add a short text record at the company where you bought your domain. Use this if you can.
  • URL prefix covers one exact address. You can verify it by uploading a file, adding a tag to your homepage, or through Google Analytics or Tag Manager. Wix, Squarespace and WordPress SEO plugins have a field where you paste the verification tag.

If DNS records make your eyes glaze over, this is a reasonable job to hand to whoever manages your domain or website. You only do it once.

Submit your sitemap

A sitemap is a file listing the pages you want Google to know about. Most website builders and SEO plugins create one automatically, usually at yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml. In Search Console, open Indexing > Sitemaps, paste the address and click Submit. Google says a sitemap can speed up discovery, though it can find pages without one.

Check indexing

URL Inspection: is this one page on Google?

Paste any page address from your site into the search bar at the top of Search Console. It tells you whether that page is indexed and, if not, why.

If you've fixed the problem or just published the page, click Request indexing. Google's URL Inspection help is honest about what this does: it "does not guarantee that the page will appear in the Google Index", there's a daily limit, and indexing "typically takes only a day or so, but can take much longer in some cases." For lots of pages, the sitemap is the better route.

Page indexing report: what's missing across the site

Open Indexing > Pages. The Page indexing report splits your pages into Indexed and Not indexed, and lists a reason for each group that isn't. The ones you're most likely to see:

  • URL marked 'noindex'. Something on the page is telling Google to stay away. On WordPress, check Settings > Reading for "Discourage search engines from indexing this site" and the page's SEO plugin settings. On Wix and Squarespace, check the page's SEO settings for a "hide from search engines" option.
  • URL blocked by robots.txt. A file on your site is telling Google not to crawl that page. Common on sites copied from a staging server.
  • Discovered - currently not indexed. Google knows the page exists but hasn't crawled it yet. Linking to it from your other pages helps; see our internal linking guide.
  • Crawled - currently not indexed. Google looked and decided not to index it for now. Thin or near-duplicate pages often end up here. Make the page more useful and distinct.
  • Duplicate without user-selected canonical. Google found several versions of the same page and chose a different one to show. Often harmless, as long as the version it chose is a real page of yours.

Not every "Not indexed" page is a problem. Old tag pages, search result pages and redirects belong there. Worry about the pages you'd want a customer to land on.

Find out what you do show up for

If your pages are indexed, open Performance > Search results. Tick all four boxes at the top: Total clicks, Total impressions, Average CTR and Average position. A quick glossary:

  • Impressions: how often one of your pages appeared in someone's results, clicked or not.
  • Clicks: how often someone clicked through to you.
  • CTR (click-through rate): clicks divided by impressions. 100 impressions and 5 clicks is a 5% CTR.
  • Average position: roughly where you appeared. Position 1 is the top; position 11 is usually the top of page two.

Then look at the Queries tab (what people typed) and the Pages tab (which of your pages showed up). Three patterns are worth acting on:

  • Positions 11 to 20 with lots of impressions. Google already thinks the page is relevant; it's just short of page one. Improve that page first.
  • Positions 1 to 10 with a low CTR. You're being seen and skipped. Usually the title. See our title tag guide.
  • No queries for your main service at all. Google doesn't connect your site to that search. Check that you have a page that clearly targets it; keyword research helps.

Don't rely on anyone's published click-through-rate tables. Your own CTR by position, for your own searches, is right there in this report and is the number that matters for you.

Manual actions and security issues

If you were showing up and suddenly vanished, check Security & Manual Actions. A manual action means, in Google's words, "a human reviewer at Google has determined that pages on the site are not compliant with Google's spam policies". Security issues flags things like a hacked site or malware. Both should say "No issues detected". If either doesn't, that's urgent and it explains a sudden drop better than anything else.

Page speed

Under Experience you'll find the Core Web Vitals report, which groups your pages into Good, Need improvement and Poor based on real visitors' experience. Speed rarely explains a site being missing from Google entirely, but it matters once you're competing. Our Core Web Vitals guide explains what to do with it, including what it means when the report says there's no data. (If you're looking for the old Mobile Usability report, Google retired it in December 2023.)

A worked example

Here's what the loop looks like for a hypothetical landscaping company that has had Search Console running for a couple of months.

  1. Find it. In Performance, on the Queries tab sorted by impressions, "drought resistant plants for front yard" has 1,400 impressions, 11 clicks and an average position of 9: seen, but rarely clicked.
  2. Match the page. Click the query, then the Pages tab. It's the blog post on drought-resistant front yards.
  3. Improve it. Rewrite the title and meta description to match the search. Add what's missing: which plants survive local summers, real photos from their own jobs. Link to it from two related posts.
  4. Ask Google to look again. Inspect the URL and click Request indexing.
  5. Wait and compare. Check the same query a few weeks later. Google's starter guide says some changes take effect in hours and others take months, so don't judge it after three days.

Your monthly routine

  1. Glance at Security & Manual Actions.
  2. Open Indexing > Pages and check no important page has slipped into "Not indexed".
  3. In Performance, find one page in positions 11 to 20 or with a low CTR, and improve it.
  4. Inspect it and request indexing.

When to call someone

Get help if your site doesn't appear in a site: search after a few weeks and Search Console shows no obvious reason, if you have a manual action or security issue, or if a site move or redesign coincided with your traffic falling off a cliff. Our SEO and marketing service can take a look.

Related reading

Continue reading