Why is my website not showing on Google?

Do these three searches on Google, in order.

1. Type site:yourdomain.co.uk (your own address, no spaces after the colon). This lists the pages Google has from your site. Google suggests this check itself.
2. Type your exact business name. Does your website come up?
3. Type what a customer would type, such as "dog groomer Truro" or "emergency electrician Plymouth".

It's new

Google says it can take a few weeks to notice a new site (Google), and that there's no guarantee any particular site will be added (Google). You don't need to pay anyone to "submit" your site.

A setting is hiding it

This one is easy to miss, because the box is often ticked while the site is being built.

• Squarespace. Search engines won't find trial, expired or cancelled sites, so you need a paid plan and a published site. Remove any site-wide password, and check that "Hide this page from search results" isn't ticked in each page's SEO tab (Squarespace).
• Wix. Make sure the site is published and the "Let search engines index your site" setting is switched on, under the SEO settings (Wix).
• WordPress. Go to Settings, then Reading, and make sure "Discourage search engines from indexing this site" is not ticked (WordPress.org).
• Any site. Google lists robots.txt rules, a "noindex" tag and password protection as ways a page gets blocked (Google). A noindex tag tells Google to drop the page entirely (Google). If someone built the site for you, ask them to check for both.

Google has taken action against it

Less common for a small business site, but Google says manual actions can lower a page or remove it from results entirely. Search Console tells you if this has happened.

Search Console is free. You don't have to use it to appear on Google, but it's the free way to see what Google has found on your site.

1. Add your site and verify that you own it. Your website builder usually has a step for this.
2. Submit your sitemap. Your website builder's help pages, or whoever built the site, can tell you where yours is.
3. Paste your home page address into the URL Inspection box at the top. It tells you whether the page is on Google and, if not, why. Once you've fixed the problem, you can ask Google to index it.

This is common, and it isn't a fault. Google has your site, but other pages match the search better.

What usually helps:

• A page for each main service, with the words customers use. "Boiler repair" and "boiler service" are different searches.
• Say where you work. Name the towns and areas you cover, in plain sentences.
• Answer the questions customers ask, such as prices, timescales and what's included.
• Keep it current. Out-of-date opening hours and prices put people off.

Google says some changes take effect in hours and others take months (Google), so give each change time.

When someone searches "hairdresser near me", the map and the businesses listed with it come from Google Business Profiles, not websites. Google says local results are based on relevance, distance and prominence, and prominence includes how many reviews you have and how many websites link to you (Google).

So if you're missing from the map, look at your Business Profile first: is it verified, complete and in the right category? Add your website link to it while you're there.

We look after websites every month, including ones we didn't build, and work on how they show up in Google and AI search. That includes checks like these, clear service pages and accurate business details. We can't guarantee rankings or traffic: Google decides what it shows.

• Getting found on Google
• Website maintenance