WordPress · Free website check
Why your WordPress site isn’t showing on Google
Most of the time it’s one setting, or just a wait. The free check reads your site for common search and sharing problems and shows what it finds, with the WordPress steps to fix it.
Check these first, most likely first
Start at the top. Each one says where to find the setting in WordPress.
“Discourage search engines from indexing this site” is ticked
This box, often ticked while a site is being built, adds a noindex tag to every page. It asks search engines to leave the whole site out.
- Go to Settings > Reading.
- Untick “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” and Save.
WordPress: the Reading settings screen
The free check reads this from your page.
An SEO plugin hides a page
If only some pages are missing, Yoast SEO or Rank Math may be set to keep them out of search.
- Edit each page named above and open your SEO plugin’s Advanced tab (Yoast SEO or Rank Math). If that tab doesn’t hide the page, your theme or another plugin does.
- If the page should appear in search: set Yoast’s “Allow search engines to show this content in search results?” to Yes, or Rank Math’s Robots Meta to Index. Then Update.
- If it should stay out of search, such as a thank-you page: leave it hidden. Yoast and Rank Math leave hidden pages out of their sitemaps; if another sitemap still lists it, exclude the page in the tool that makes that sitemap.
Yoast: hiding one page from search engines
The free check reads the search settings of up to 10 other pages.
robots.txt tells search engines to stay out
The Reading setting above can do this, and so can a plugin that edits robots.txt. Search engines that follow it will not read your pages, so they may not appear.
- Go to Settings > Reading and untick “Discourage search engines from indexing this site”.
- If an SEO plugin edits robots.txt (Yoast: Tools > File editor), remove the blocking rule there.
WordPress: the Reading settings screen
The free check reads your robots.txt.
Google doesn’t have your sitemap
Google finds a site faster when it has been told where its sitemap is.
- WordPress publishes /wp-sitemap.xml (Yoast uses /sitemap_index.xml instead).
- Submit that address in Google Search Console.
Google: submit a sitemap in Search Console
The free check looks for your sitemap and tells you if it is missing or points elsewhere.
See whether Google has listed your site yet
- Search Google for
site:yourdomain.com, using your own address. Pages in the results are on Google. No results does not prove the site is absent: this search can omit indexed pages. Use URL Inspection below to check a specific page. - To check one page, open Google Search Console (free), paste the page’s address into the box at the top and read the answer: “URL is on Google” or “URL is not on Google”. Open “Page indexing” to see why.
- If the page isn’t on Google and nothing is blocking it, press “Request indexing”. Google says this usually takes a day or so, can take much longer, and isn’t guaranteed.
A new site can take a while: Google says anywhere from a day or two to a few weeks, and suggests allowing at least a week after you submit a sitemap.
Google: check a page with URL Inspection Google: why a page might be missing from search
What the free check looks at
- Whether the page asks search engines not to list it (a noindex tag or header).
- Whether robots.txt shuts search engines out.
- Whether the site publishes a sitemap, and whether it points at your own pages.
- Whether the page names another address as its main one.
- Whether the www and non-www addresses both work.
- The search settings of up to 10 other pages.
It only reads public pages. It never signs in, and nothing on your site changes. It can’t see Google’s own list, which is why the steps above matter. How the check works.
A noindex switch that someone turns back on is an easy way for a site to drop out quietly. DeployPost Watch runs this check on your page every day and emails you when something looks different. See DeployPost Watch.
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