Why your page is not on Google
Being online and being indexed are two different things. The four causes behind almost every absence, and how to check which one applies to you. Beginners' SEO series, part two.
The first part laid it out: Google crawls, indexes, then ranks. This part stops at the middle link, indexing, because that is where the most common disappointment lives: “my site has been online for weeks and it doesn’t show up”.
Being online means answering when a browser asks for the page. Being indexed means appearing in Google’s database. There is no automatic connection between the two.
Check before you theorise
First reflex, before any theory: type site:your-domain.ch into Google. This search lists what Google knows about your domain. It is approximate, but it answers the opening question: is there something, or nothing?
The precise diagnosis, page by page, happens in Search Console, Google’s free tool, to which the next part is devoted. For now, simply remember that there is a URL inspection tool that says, for each page, whether it is indexed and, if not, why.
The four causes that explain almost everything
The page is unknown. No link leads to it, nobody has declared it: Google does not know it exists. This is the normal state of a brand-new site. The remedy comes down to two moves the series will detail: a declared sitemap, and links that lead to every page.
The page is barred from crawling. A file named robots.txt, at the root of the site, can forbid the crawler to download certain addresses. It is a legitimate tool, documented by Google, but one over-broad line written on a construction day can block the entire site. This happens far more often than you would think, especially when a test site goes into production with its test settings.
The page is barred from indexing. A tag inside the page, noindex, asks Google not to file it in the index. Google respects it strictly. Same frequent origin: a construction setting left behind. The symptom is cruel, because the site works perfectly for visitors, and exists for no search engine at all.
The page is known, crawled, and not kept. This is the hardest case to hear: everything is technically correct, but Google has judged the page too thin, too similar to another, or not useful enough to deserve a place. URL inspection then shows “crawled, currently not indexed”. The remedy is not technical, it is editorial, and a whole part of the series will be devoted to it.
Why the series runs in this order
These four causes are checked in this order, from the most mechanical to the most human. There is no point rewriting your texts if a noindex tag is lying around in the pages; no point polishing your sitemap if robots.txt bars the door. The right reflex is the plumber’s: follow the pipe from the water inlet, and fix the first leak you find, not the most interesting one.
This is a check that gets redone over time, not once and for all: watching over a site’s search presence is part of its maintenance.
Next part: Search Console, or how to get all of this from Google’s own mouth instead of guessing.
Who writes these notes
This journal is kept by the workshop that designs and maintains the house’s websites. Everything described here, the Search Console, internal links, the business profile, is part of the work delivered with a site: if you would rather someone took care of it, that is precisely the trade.