Google is not indexing your website because of robots.txt blocking, noindex tags, thin content, crawl budget issues, orphan pages, server errors, or a new site that has not been discovered yet. Each has a different fix.
The 7 most common indexing problems
1. Robots.txt blocking Googlebot
Check yoursite.com/robots.txt immediately. If it contains Disallow: / you have zero crawlability. This is the most common cause of complete indexing failure after site launches.
2. Noindex meta tags
A meta name="robots" content="noindex" tag tells Google explicitly not to index the page. Often added during development and never removed. Check page source and Google Search Console Coverage report.
3. Thin or duplicate content
Google will not index pages it considers low quality. Pages under 300 meaningful words or pages with duplicate content across the site are routinely excluded.
4. New site not yet discovered
A brand new site with no backlinks can take weeks to be found. Submit sitemap.xml through Search Console and request indexing of the homepage to accelerate this.
5. Server errors (5xx)
If your server returns errors when Google crawls it, Google eventually stops trying. Check Search Console Coverage for server errors.
6. Orphan pages
Pages with no internal links pointing to them may never be crawled. Googlebot follows links to discover content.
7. Core Web Vitals issues
Extremely slow pages or severe layout shift are deprioritized in crawling, effectively reducing indexing frequency.
Open Google Search Console Coverage report before changing anything. It tells you exactly which pages are indexed, which are excluded and why, and which have errors. The fix depends entirely on the correct diagnosis.
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