Why Isn't My Site In Google?

Another of the most common complaints I see on Google Webmaster Help Forum is "I can't find my site in Google!" Submission alone is not sufficient to get a website indexed. It will get your website crawled, but that's just a first step. It's good to remember that the search engines are eager to include new websites in their index, so there are usually some simple explainations why a site hasn't been indexed. This Search Engine Optimization Tutorial will show you the most likely reasons for the problem and the solutions.

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Reasons Why A Website Isn't Indexed

No Inbound Links To The Site - You need at least one good quality link from another website to be included (ie. "indexed") in the major search engines. This is the main reason why new websites are not indexed. Start by submitting your site to a good quality directory like The Open Directory Project, JoeAnt, or one of the others I recommend in my Building Links SEO Tips article. Ask other websites whose main topic is related to yours to link to your site. A good quality link comes from a prominent page on a high quality website. Forum signatures and blog comments are not likely to help your ranking much, but they can help get your site indexed.

Site Blocked By The robots.txt File - The robots.txt file controls how search engines access your site. Many website designers block the search engines from crawling a site while it's under construction, and then forget to remove that block when the design in completed. So check your robots.txt file in Google's Webmaster Tools, where a tool is provided that will test your robots.txt file.

Site Blocked By robots <META> Tag - Similarly, some web designers will insert a robots <META> tag set to "noindex" on a website's main page while it's in the testing stage. The "noindex" robots <meta> tag will prevent a page from being indexed, or will remove it if it has previously been indexed.

Server And DNS Problems - It's rare, but not unheard of, for server problems to be severe enough to prevent the search engines from accessing a site. Sometimes hosting services have automatic controls that see search engine crawlers (a.k.a. "robots", a.k.a. "spiders") as malicious and block them. Use the "Fetch As Googlebot" tool in Google's Webmaster Tools console to make sure that Googlebot (Google's crawler) can access your site. Extremely slow response times can also prevent indexing. An improperly configured Domain Name Server (DNS) can sometimes cause problems as well. Check your domain's DNS at intoDNS, and if their system reports problems, consult your hosting service about it.

Frame-Forwarded Domain - Some free and low-cost services have webmasters create a <frameset> page as the main page of a domain name package, but the website's actual content resides on a different domain. The major search engines see such a website as having no content of its own and will not index it. They will, instead, index the content at the domain where it resides.

Poorly Constructed Webpages - The search engines' crawlers are very tolerant of errors in the HTML mark-up of webpages, but it is possible for this to prevent indexing in extreme cases. Valid HTML mark-up will not only help insure that your site is indexed properly, it will also insure that your users see what you wanted them to see when they visit your site. Check your site's HTML with the W3C's HTML Validator and correct any errors it reports.

As I say, the search engines are anxious to include your website. You just have to make sure that they see a signal of quality (an inbound link!), and that your site behaves properly. Of course, being indexed is not the same as ranking well, but it's a very necessary first step in your Search Engine Optimization and Marketing program.

This page was last updated on March 30, 2012

Why Isn't My Site In Google?

Reasons Why A Website Isn't Indexed

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