Why isn't my website showing up on Google?

You paid for a website, you search your business on Google, and… nothing. Before you panic (or blame whoever built it), work through these six causes in order — the first two take five minutes to check and are the culprit more often than you'd think.

First, figure out which problem you have

Search Google for site:yourdomain.com (no spaces). Two possible outcomes:

• Your pages show up → Google knows about you; you have a ranking problem (skip to reason 4).
• Nothing shows up → Google hasn't indexed you at all; you have an indexing problem (start at reason 1).

Reason 1: Your site is too new

Google doesn't discover new sites instantly. If you launched in the last few weeks, the fix is simple: verify your site in Google Search Console (free) and submit your sitemap. That usually gets indexing done within days instead of weeks.

Reason 2: Your site is telling Google to stay away

More common than you'd think: a stray noindex tag or a robots.txt file blocking everything — often left over from development, when the builder deliberately hid the site. Search Console's page indexing report will show this explicitly. If your web person launched the site and forgot to remove the block, five minutes fixes it.

Reason 3: Technical problems are blocking crawlers

Painfully slow load times, broken pages, or a site that only works with certain browsers can all choke Google's crawler. Run your site through PageSpeed Insights (free Google tool). Scores in the red are hurting both indexing and ranking.

Reason 4: You're indexed, but your content is thin

Google can't rank you for "bathroom remodeling Richmond" if your website never meaningfully talks about bathroom remodeling or Richmond. One-page sites with three sentences per service struggle here. Every service you want to be found for needs real content — its own page, ideally — that answers what customers actually search.

Reason 5: Weak local signals

For local searches, Google leans heavily on signals beyond your website: your Google Business Profile, reviews, and consistent business listings across the web. If your GBP is unclaimed or half-empty, your website is fighting with one hand tied. (Here's the full guide to fixing that.)

Reason 6: Your competition is simply doing more

Sometimes nothing is broken — the businesses above you just have more reviews, more content, more years of accumulated authority. That's not a five-minute fix, but it's a solvable one: consistent local SEO compounds month over month, and most Richmond niches are far less competitive than owners assume.

The free diagnostic toolbox

Everything you need to diagnose this yourself costs nothing:

• Google Search Console — the ground truth. Shows exactly which pages Google has indexed, what searches you appear for, and every crawl error. If you set up only one tool, make it this one.
• PageSpeed Insights — paste your URL, get a speed score and a ranked list of what's slowing you down.
• Google's Rich Results Test — checks whether your structured data (schema markup) is valid and eligible for enhanced listings.
• Bing Webmaster Tools — often forgotten, increasingly important: Bing's index powers several AI search tools, so being indexed there now affects whether AI assistants can recommend you.

Still stuck?

I do free website reviews for Richmond-area businesses: I'll check all of the above and send you the three highest-impact fixes, whether or not you ever hire me. No pressure — I'd rather you know what's wrong than guess.