Google Isn't Indexing Your Site? Check These 7 Things In Order

"We launched two weeks ago and Google has indexed nothing." This is the most common blocker for small export websites, and the most commonly misdiagnosed one: the usual reaction is to assume Google dislikes new domains, and to go buy backlinks, change servers, or rebuild the site. The real cause is usually far more specific, and it takes about five minutes to find.

One premise first: indexed and ranked are two different things. Indexed means Google stored the page; ranked means Google shows it for a query. This article only covers the first one — talking about rankings before indexing is pointless.

First, work out which kind of "not indexed" you have

In Google Search Console (GSC), the Pages report gives you three signals. Match yours:

Symptom	Meaning	Where to look
URL Inspection says "URL is not on Google" but it can be fetched	Crawling is fine; indexing was rejected	The "Crawled - currently not indexed" reason
Inspection says "Blocked by robots.txt" or cannot be reached	Blocked at the crawl stage	robots.txt, status codes, firewall
The URL is not in GSC at all	Google does not know it exists	Sitemap, internal links, submission
Indexed, but searching the title does not show it	Not an indexing problem	Ranking and content quality (out of scope)

Misclassifying this is the biggest time sink. Below is how to check each.

Step 1: Make sure robots.txt is not blocking the whole site

The cheapest and most common mistake: a leftover Disallow: / from a staging environment. Open yourdomain.com/robots.txt and look at it, then use GSC's robots.txt tester on a specific URL.

Also confirm no <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> slipped into the template — it is sneakier than robots.txt, because the page loads normally and simply never enters the index.

Step 2: Check the HTTP status code

Use curl -I, not a browser (browsers follow redirects and execute JavaScript):

curl -I https://yourdomain.com/some-page

Confirm three things:

• The status is 200, not a redirect chain and not 403 (many WAFs block Googlebot's user agent);
• Content-Type is text/html rather than application/json (a classic misconfigured SPA);
• No X-Robots-Tag: noindex hiding in the response headers.

Step 3: Confirm the content is visible without JavaScript

Google can render JavaScript, but rendering is a second pass after crawling, and it queues — especially for new sites. Self-check with curl:

curl -s https://yourdomain.com/article | grep -o "a phrase from your body copy" | head

If it is absent from the raw HTML and only appears in a browser, your content is client-rendered. Slow indexing is then guaranteed; server rendering or static generation is the fix.

Step 4: Is the sitemap submitted, and error-free?

In GSC's Sitemaps section, confirm:

• The sitemap is submitted and reported as successful;
• Opening sitemap.xml shows the URLs you actually want indexed (a common bug: only the homepage is listed, or a paginated content API only returns the first page so everything past number 100 never makes it in);
• Every URL in it returns 200 and is a canonical address — no redirects, no parameter URLs.

Step 5: Read the "Crawled - currently not indexed" reason

This column is where the real answer lives. The usual suspects:

Reason	Usually means	What to do
Crawled - currently not indexed	Thin content, or too similar to other pages on the site	Add substance, merge duplicates, add internal links
Discovered - currently not indexed	Google knows it but crawl budget is short (new sites, too many pages)	Cut near-duplicate pages, improve internal linking, wait
Duplicate, Google chose a different canonical	canonical or hreflang misconfigured	Check self-referencing canonical and cross-language hreflang
Alternate page with proper canonical tag	Normal — another URL represents it	Usually nothing

Step 6: Request indexing for individual pages

For a single important page, URL Inspection → Request Indexing genuinely helps, with two caveats: the page must not be blocked, and your quota must not be exhausted. It will not get a thin page indexed by itself.

Step 7: Check crawl stats — did Google even visit?

Settings → Crawl stats shows requests over the last 90 days. If the crawler never came, the previous six steps are moot: the problem is discovery — no internal links, no sitemap, a very new domain, or a server that is slow from overseas.

Timelines for new sites: do not measure yourself against someone else's

Indexing speed depends on domain age, content volume, crawl budget and server response. Rough ranges:

Stage	Typical duration
Sitemap submitted → first crawl	1 day to 2 weeks
First crawl → first pages indexed	3 days to 3 weeks
A new domain (under 3 months) settling into a steady crawl rhythm	1 to 3 months

So "two weeks and still nothing" is entirely normal for a new domain. What matters is: confirm there is no hard block (steps 1-3), get the sitemap and internal links right (step 4), then keep publishing so crawl budget has something to fetch.

One overlooked accelerator: internal links

Google discovers pages mainly through links between pages, not sitemaps. The common failure for new sites is publishing an article that nothing links to except the list page. Our approach is to cross-link articles by topic (this one pairs well with hreflang for multilingual sites) and to keep list pagination stable.

If the site is yours, get the foundation right first

Everything above assumes the site can be indexed at all: server rendering, self-referencing canonicals, correct hreflang, a readable sitemap, structured data. Those belong in the build, not in an afterthought. Our Standard build lists them as deliverables; if your current site was built elsewhere, the checklist above works as an audit.