10 Reasons Google Won’t Index Your Site

Posted - January 19, 2021

When Google crawls and indexes your site, it makes a determination on the relevance of your site’s content for specific user searches. If your site isn’t indexed, Google isn’t able to review the relevance of your content and rank your site in search results. Indexing is one of the most important factors of search engine optimization (SEO). However, if Google can’t find your site, there’s no way it will get indexed or found in searches. If you find that your site isn’t appearing in relevant searches, these 10 problems could be the reason why Google isn’t indexing or ranking your pages.

Your Pages Aren’t Mobile-Friendly

Mobile-first indexing is a current push from Google to ensure that the sites it prioritizes for indexing and ranking are mobile-friendly. After all, nearly 60 percent of all online searches are from mobile devices. If your site isn’t mobile-friendly, Googlebot won’t index it. This is devastating if you’ve optimized your site to perfection in every way but somehow ignored mobile-friendliness. If you need help making your site mobile-friendly, a team of optimization experts may be able to quickly get your site back up to speed.

Your Site Doesn’t Have a Domain

This one should be obvious. Although having a website without a domain name is possible, crawlers will never index it— and it won’t appear in search results. When you host a site on a free domain name, it is typically given a domain like yoursite.hostdomain.com, which isn’t SEO-friendly for indexing or people who are searching for your website. Essentially, if you want people to find your website, purchasing a custom domain name is a required first step for indexing.

Your Coding is Too Complicated

Even if you are using a standard coding language, it’s possible to use incorrect settings that make the coding too complex for indexing. If you have run through every possibility for index failure, this could be the culprit. Fortunately, tools like the Google Mobile-Friendly Testing Tool can help shed some light on coding issues and steps to resolve them.

Pages Aren’t Included in an XML Sitemap

Your XML sitemap is the key indicator that lets Google know which pages of your site it needs to crawl and index. Without linking your page to your XML sitemap, it’s possible that Google may have a hard time finding it or may just consider it a lesser page that doesn’t require indexing. The bottom line is that if you want your page to be found, make sure it shows up in your XML sitemap as a page of importance.

Your Site Loads Too Slow

User experience is a massive piece of the indexing and ranking puzzle for Google. If your site is too slow, it may not get indexed. Using a tool like Google Page Speed Insights can help you make moves to improve the speed of your website and make it a true candidate for prioritized indexing.

You’ve Inherited a “Bad” Domain

Inherited site issues are a common reason behind great sites not getting indexed. If you purchase an old site domain, you run the risk of a bad purchase despite performing all of the right SEO tactics. If you purchased an old domain and your site isn’t ranking, it’s possible that the old domain could have been part of black hat practices that have the site consistently flagged as a spammy or junk site. If this is the case, you can make changes to get your domain back in the good graces of search engines, then file a reconsideration request with Google.

You’ve Focused on Content Minimalism

We’ve mentioned this point before, but need to stress it again. Google rewards websites that have quality content. It’s a feat that a meager few hundred words can’t accomplish. While minimalism in site design is in, content minimalism is out. If any of your pages aren’t coming in at around 1,000 words or more, or are significantly shorter than your competition, your low-value content could be killing your ranking possibilities.

Your Site Has Duplicate Content

As if low-value content wasn’t bad enough if your site uses scraped or duplicate content throughout its pages, it’s committing a content sin that definitely puts indexing at risk. When Google stumbles upon sites that have duplicate or extremely similar content, it is unable to decide which of the pages to index as the legitimate piece of content. So, while you may end up getting indexed, there is always the chance that crawlers will pass up your content and leave you high and dry on the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Your Plugins Are Blocking Crawlers

If you’re using a plugin that manages robots.txt, link creation, or caching, it’s possible that you have used the plugin improperly and have blocked search crawlers. If you suspect that a plugin is preventing your site from indexing, a technical SEO professional can review your site and point out any plugins that could be causing the problem. They can dig deeper into plugin settings to make sure they don’t prevent indexing.

You’ve Acquired a Manual Action

If you are performing your own SEO and are unknowingly (or knowingly) practicing black hat or gray hat SEO, you could have a manual action on your hands that’s keeping your site from indexing and ranking.

Falling out of compliance with Google is detrimental to your ranking possibilities and is something that site owners should resolve as soon as possible.

Some of the actions that may label your site as non-compliant with Google’s guidelines are:

Spammy free hosting
Unnatural links to and from your site
Third-party spam
Keyword stuffing
Hidden text
Cloaked images
Structured data problems
Weak content

Get Indexed and Found Today With Dallas SEO Dogs

Putting a ton of work into your site only to fail at rankings can be frustrating for any legitimate site owner. If you’re struggling to vie for Google’s indexing attention, it’s time to reach out to Dallas SEO Dogs.

Our team of experienced SEOs can help determine any indexing problems your site has and quickly implement solutions that make a difference. From content creation to updating backend metadata, we have your site covered.

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