How do I check whether my website is indexed?
Search Google for site: followed by your domain, with no space, so site:example.co.uk. Google returns every page it holds for that domain. If nothing comes back, the site is not indexed. If a handful of pages come back and the important ones are missing, those pages are not indexed. Search Console gives the full list under Indexing and then Pages, split into indexed and not indexed with a reason against each, and that reason is normally the diagnosis on its own.
What are the most common reasons Google has not indexed a site?
Six, and the first two cause most of the cases we see. They are the leftovers of a website build. Developers block the staging site so Google does not index a half-finished copy, and the block goes live with the site. Nobody notices, because the site looks fine to a person.
- A noindex tag or header, usually left over from the development site
- A robots.txt rule blocking Google from the site or a folder
- A brand new site that Google has not discovered yet
- No sitemap submitted and no other site linking in, so there is no route to the pages
- Pages Google crawled and chose to leave out as thin or duplicated
- A server, security plugin or firewall that blocks Google’s crawler
How do I check for a noindex tag or a robots block?
Paste the page address into the URL inspection bar at the top of Search Console. The result says either that the page is on Google or that it is not, and underneath it names the reason: excluded by noindex tag, blocked by robots.txt, crawled but currently not indexed, discovered but currently not crawled. Each of those is a different fix. For robots.txt you can also load yourdomain.co.uk/robots.txt in a browser and read it. A line saying Disallow with a single slash after it blocks the whole site.
What does crawled, currently not indexed mean?
That Google reached the page, read it and decided it was not worth keeping. It is the most frustrating reason because nothing is technically wrong. It happens to pages that are near copies of each other, to location pages that swap the town name and nothing else, to service pages with a paragraph on them, and to whole sites with no history and no links. The fix is content: give the page something a searcher would want that no other page has.
Discovered, currently not crawled is milder. It usually means Google has the address but has not got round to it, which a sitemap and an internal link normally solves.
How do I get a new site indexed faster?
Submit a sitemap in Search Console, request indexing on the homepage and the main service pages through URL inspection, link the site from your Google Business Profile and any directory that already lists the business, and make sure every page is reachable from the navigation. A new site with those in place is usually indexed within days. Without them it can sit undiscovered for months, especially if the domain has never had a site on it before.
What would Halizona do about it?
Confirm the reason in Search Console, remove it, then request indexing and check back until the pages are in. For a leftover noindex or robots block that is a same-day job. For crawled, currently not indexed it is a writing job: the pages need to earn their place. Every site we build goes live with the sitemap submitted, the robots file checked and the key pages inspected, because we have seen too many good sites sit invisible for a reason that took a minute to fix.
RB Electrical has a page for each specific service with enough on it to rank in its own right, and that structure is as much about being indexed as it is about ranking. Thin pages get left out. Pages with something to say get kept.
