You’re sitting in the truck outside a job in Spring, you type your company name into Google, and you scroll. Yelp is there. Your Facebook page is there. Some directory you’ve never heard of is there. Your new website, the one you paid for in August, is nowhere.
It’s almost always one of two problems. Either Google hasn’t indexed the site at all (it’s new, or something is telling Google to stay out), or it’s indexed but doesn’t rank for the searches you tried. Occasionally there’s a sneakier third case, where you’re looking at the map results, which run on your Google Business Profile, and blaming the website for them. Each has a different fix. Diagnose first, then touch settings.
What follows is the order we check things in when an owner in The Woodlands or anywhere around Houston sends us that exact panicked text. Most of it takes an hour and costs nothing.
Is my website indexed? Start with a site: search
Open Google (on google.com itself, not by typing into your browser’s address bar) and search site:yourdomain.com with no space after the colon. Then try a single important page with the full address, like site:yourdomain.com/ac-repair.
Per the SEO starter guide, if results point to your site, you’re in the index. That one search splits the problem in half.
Zero results means Google has nothing. That’s an indexing problem, and it usually has a mechanical cause you’ll find in the next two sections. If some pages come up but not the ones that matter, you’re partially indexed, so look at which are missing and why (duplicates, thin pages, a broken canonical).
And if dozens of pages come up but you still can’t find yourself for “plumber Conroe”? You’re indexed. That’s a ranking problem, it’s slower, and no checkbox will fix it.
Don’t treat the count as gospel. Google’s own documentation on the site: operator says the list is “not always exhaustive” and that the results beyond the first one are “relatively random.” Use it as a smoke test, then confirm in Search Console.
Website not indexed? What Google Search Console will tell you
If you don’t have Search Console set up, do that first. It’s free, and it’s the only place Google tells you directly why a page isn’t in the index. Verify a Domain property through a DNS record at your registrar (GoDaddy, Squarespace Domains, Cloudflare) so it covers every version of your address.
URL Inspection: one page at a time
Paste your homepage URL into the bar at the top. The URL Inspection tool gives one of four verdicts: URL is on Google, URL is on Google, but has issues, URL is not on Google, or URL is an alternate version. If it’s not on Google, expand the indexing section and read four lines, the same ones Google’s troubleshooting checklist for a single page walks through:
- Crawl allowed? Anything but “Yes” means robots.txt is blocking Google.
- Page fetch should say “Successful.” If it doesn’t, Google hit an error: a 404, a server error, a login wall.
- A “No” under Indexing allowed? means there’s a noindex directive on the page.
- Then the Google-selected canonical. If Google picked a different URL as the main version, this page is being treated as a duplicate.
If Last crawl is blank, Google simply hasn’t found the page yet. Click Test live URL, then Request indexing. Google says there’s a daily limit on those requests and that a request doesn’t guarantee anything, so spend them on your handful of money pages and let the sitemap handle the rest. (Clicking it again every morning doesn’t speed anything up. People try.)
Page indexing report: the whole site
Under Indexing → Pages, the Page indexing report lists every reason pages weren’t indexed. The names you’ll see most on small business sites are Excluded by ‘noindex’ tag, Blocked by robots.txt, Crawled - currently not indexed, Discovered - currently not indexed, Duplicate without user-selected canonical, Alternate page with proper canonical tag, Page with redirect, Not found (404) and Soft 404.
Some of those are fine. “Page with redirect” on your old URLs after a redesign is exactly what should happen. Google’s own line is that you “should not expect all URLs on your site to be indexed.” Save the worrying for pages that are supposed to make the phone ring.
Did a redesign or a website builder hide your site from Google?
We find this one more than anything else, and it’s almost always innocent. Designers build new sites on a staging copy and tell Google to stay away while it’s unfinished. Then launch day comes, everybody is busy testing the contact form, and nobody flips the switch back.
On WordPress the switch is under Settings → Reading → Search engine visibility. If “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” is ticked, uncheck it. Per Kinsta’s explainer, the box works by adding a robots meta tag that tells search engines not to index the site.
Other platforms hide it in different places:
- Wix has a Let search engines index your site toggle in SEO Settings. Wix’s help page has the current menu path, which Wix has moved around more than once.
- On Squarespace, a site-wide password or Site Availability set to Private keeps Google out. So does the per-page Hide Page from Search Results toggle under the page’s SEO settings, as this Squarespace walkthrough from Collaborada explains. Owners turn that on for a draft services page and forget it.
- Custom or developer-built sites: look for a robots.txt with Disallow: / left over from staging, and an HTTP header called X-Robots-Tag set to noindex.
The quick check on any platform: open your homepage, right-click, choose View Page Source, and search the page for “noindex.” If you find it in a robots meta tag on a page you want found, that’s your answer.
One trap worth knowing. Blocking a page in robots.txt doesn’t remove it from Google, and it can actually stop a noindex from working. Google’s noindex documentation says plainly that the page “must not be blocked by a robots.txt file” or Google never sees the noindex. For pages you want hidden, use noindex and leave robots.txt alone.
If your redesign launched months ago and traffic never came back, our post on signs your website needs a redesign covers the other side of it: when the new site itself is the problem.
Canonical tags, duplicate pages and thin content
A canonical tag tells Google which version of a page is the real one. When it’s right, nobody notices it. When it’s wrong, it quietly hands your rankings to another URL.
After a launch, the usual culprit is a canonical on every page pointing at the staging domain, or at the homepage. Google reads that as “this page is a copy of that one” and indexes the other address. URL Inspection shows it as a mismatch between the user-declared canonical and the Google-selected one. Fixing it is a one-line change in your SEO plugin or theme, then Request indexing on the main pages.
Sites also duplicate themselves. Service-area pages are the repeat offender: twenty near-identical pages reading “Best AC repair in Tomball,” “Best AC repair in Magnolia” and so on down the list, with only the town name swapped. Google often indexes one or two and drops the rest into Duplicate without user-selected canonical or Crawled - currently not indexed. We’d write five real pages before twenty clones. A Magnolia page that mentions the actual neighborhoods you serve, the jobs you’ve done off FM 1488, and your real response time out there is worth more than ten clones.
Thin pages get the same treatment. A “Services” page with a list of six bullet points and nothing else gives Google little reason to index it, and honestly, it gives a customer little reason to call.
Why does my business show up when I search the name but not for my services?
Because indexing and ranking are different things. If site: finds you and a search for your business name brings you up first, Google has your site and trusts it’s yours. That part works.
Searching “ac repair the woodlands” is a different contest. You’re now competing with every HVAC company that serves 77380 and 77382, plus directories, plus companies that have been publishing pages and collecting links and reviews for ten years. A two-month-old site will lose that race for a while, even with everything set up perfectly.
Open Search Console’s Performance report first. It shows the queries you already get impressions for, and if service searches appear at an average position of 30 or 40, you’re in the game, just far back.
Then put your service page next to the three that rank above you and count the words, photos and reviews, plus how many real specifics each one gives. Whatever they have that you don’t goes on the to-do list.
How long it takes to close that gap is its own question, and we answer it honestly in how long SEO takes in Houston and The Woodlands. Short version: it’s measured in months, and longer in crowded trades like roofing.
My business is not showing on Google Maps. Is that the website’s fault?
Usually not. The map results (the “local pack” with three businesses and a map) come mostly from your Google Business Profile, which is a separate thing from your website. A business can have a beautiful, fully indexed site and still be missing from the map, or rank in the map with no website at all.
Google names three factors in Google’s local ranking help page: relevance (how well the profile matches the search), distance (how far the business is from the searcher), and prominence (how well-known it is, including links and reviews). It also says a verified profile is “more likely to show up in search results.” Start with the boring checks:
- Is the profile verified, and not suspended? Sign in at business.google.com and look.
- Is your primary category the thing people search? “Air conditioning contractor” and “HVAC contractor” behave differently.
- Are you searching from where your customers are? A shop in Conroe won’t appear for someone in Sugar Land searching “plumber near me,” and that’s distance working as designed.
- Does the profile link to the matching page on your website, with the same name, address and phone?
Our local SEO checklist for The Woodlands covers the profile side in depth. Fix it alongside the website, because for most service searches around here, the map shows up above the regular results.
Manual actions, hacked sites and the rarer causes
Rare for a local business, but check, because it takes thirty seconds. In Search Console, open Security & Manual Actions.
The Manual actions report shows whether a human reviewer at Google has penalized the site. The types include “Thin content with little or no added value,” “Unnatural links to your site,” “Hidden text and/or keyword stuffing,” “User-generated spam” and “Site abused with third-party spam.” Google says most actions lower rankings or remove pages, and that it notifies you in the report and in the Search Console message center.
If you see one, fix every listed problem on every affected page (Google says partial fixes don’t restore anything), then click Request Review with a plain explanation of what you changed. Reviews can take days or weeks.
On the small business sites we audit, we see hacks far more often than penalties. Old WordPress plugins are the usual way in. Search site:yourdomain.com plus words like “casino” or “pills,” and if spam pages show up, you’ve been hacked.
A flaky host shows up as Server error (5xx) in the Page indexing report; pages usually come back once the site is stable. And if you bought an expired domain, look it up on the Wayback Machine. A previous owner’s spam can follow it.
Symptom, cause and fix: the cheat sheet
Find the row that matches what you’re seeing. Start at the top; the cheapest fixes are first.
| What you see | Likely cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| site: search returns nothing | New domain not discovered yet, or the whole site is noindexed or password-protected | Check builder visibility settings, remove noindex, submit a sitemap, request indexing on the homepage |
| Fell out of Google right after a redesign | Staging noindex or robots.txt carried to the live site; old URLs not redirected | Remove the block; 301-redirect every old URL to its new match |
| “Excluded by ‘noindex’ tag” on pages that matter | Builder toggle, SEO plugin setting, or a hidden-page option | Turn the setting off, then Validate Fix in the report |
| “Blocked by robots.txt” | A Disallow rule covering pages you want found | Edit robots.txt; test the URL live |
| “Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user” | Near-identical pages, or a canonical tag pointing to the wrong address | Fix canonicals; merge or rewrite clone pages |
| “Crawled - currently not indexed” | Google saw the page and didn’t think it was worth keeping | Make the page more useful and specific; link to it from your main pages |
| “Discovered - currently not indexed” | Google knows the URL but hasn’t crawled it yet | Add internal links and a sitemap; give it time |
| Shows for your name, not for services | Indexed but not competitive yet | Better service pages, reviews, local links; patience |
| Missing from the map | Business Profile unverified, wrong category, or distance | Verify, fix the category, link the profile to the right page |
| Sudden drop across the whole site | Manual action, hack, or server errors | Check Security & Manual Actions and the 5xx count |
After you fix something in the Page indexing report, click Validate Fix. Google says validation “typically takes up to about two weeks,” sometimes longer, so don’t panic if the count doesn’t move on day three.
How long should you wait before you worry?
For a brand-new domain, a week or two of nothing is normal. Google’s URL Inspection documentation says indexing “typically takes only a day or so, but can take much longer in some cases,” and elsewhere that it “can take up to a week or two.” The SEO starter guide is blunter about results: “Some changes might take effect in a few hours, others could take several months.”
For the first 14 days on a new site, set up Search Console, submit the sitemap, request indexing on the homepage and top service pages, and then leave it alone. Really. Stop checking.
Two to four weeks with zero pages indexed means something is blocking Google, so go back through the redesign section. If you’re indexed but have no service rankings after three to six months, you’re past the technical stuff and into content and authority.
Meanwhile, the phone still needs to ring. If you just launched and the busy season is now (for a lot of Houston trades that means the first 95-degree week in May), a small Google Ads campaign and a well-built Business Profile can cover the months while organic catches up. We’d rather you spend a few hundred dollars a month on tightly targeted ads during that stretch than pay someone to “submit your site to 500 search engines.” Google finds sites through links and sitemaps; nobody needs to submit you anywhere.
Fix it yourself or call someone?
Most of this is DIY. An owner can run the site: search, check the builder toggles, look over the Business Profile and open the Manual actions report in one afternoon.
Pay for help if a migration went badly and you’ve got hundreds of old URLs with no redirect map, or if Search Console shows canonical and duplicate problems across most of the site. Same if you’re indexed and just not competitive. That one is real SEO work, and our web design and SEO team does it for businesses across Montgomery and Harris County.
Your next step today: run site:yourdomain.com, then inspect your homepage in Search Console. Those two checks tell you which half of this guide you need. And if you’re running Google Ads or Meta ads to cover the gap, our free Ad Spend Leak Check is a 10-minute video showing where that budget is leaking, in your inbox within 48 hours.
Frequently asked questions
Why is my website not showing up on Google?
Usually because Google hasn't indexed it or because it's indexed but doesn't rank for the searches you tried. Run a site:yourdomain.com search on google.com. No results points to an indexing block such as a noindex tag, a password, or a robots.txt rule. Results without rankings for your services is a competition problem. Search Console's URL Inspection tool tells you which one you have.
How do I get Google to index my website?
Verify the site in Google Search Console, submit an XML sitemap, and use URL Inspection on your homepage and main service pages, then click Request indexing. Make sure nothing blocks Google: no noindex tag, no site password, no robots.txt disallow rule. Link your important pages from the homepage. Google says indexing often takes a day or so but can take a week or two.
Why does my business show up on Google Maps but not my website?
The map results come mainly from your Google Business Profile, which is separate from your website. A verified profile with the right category can appear in the map pack even if the site isn't indexed or doesn't rank. Check the site with a site: search and Search Console, and make sure the profile links to the matching page on your website.
How long does it take for a new website to show up on Google?
A new site often appears for its own name within days to a couple of weeks once Search Console and a sitemap are set up. Ranking for competitive service searches like plumber or roofer in Houston takes much longer, usually months. Google itself says some changes take effect in hours and others take several months, so judge progress over weeks rather than days.
Can a website redesign make you disappear from Google?
Yes, and it's one of the most common causes we see. The new site may launch with a staging noindex tag, a robots.txt block, a password page, or canonical tags pointing at the wrong address. Old URLs that aren't redirected also lose their rankings. Check visibility settings, view the page source for noindex, and set up 301 redirects from every old URL.
Sean Melton is the founder of First Byte, a digital marketing agency in The Woodlands, TX. A former global CMO of a $250M software company, he has spent his career inside the businesses he markets. His team runs paid social, search, CTV and creative for brands like Equinox, Kroger and Viceroy, and shares what works here.