Google is undoubtedly the best search engine platform in the world. It has helped us organically reach our customers just by adapting a few good practices. However, it can get frustrating at times when you spend so much on developing a website and it doesn’t show up in the search index.
Only when it shows up on the index, you can get potential clients to visit your website. There are many reasons why Google has not indexed your site(yet). In this blog, we will list some of the common reasons why.
How does Google Index Sites?
Google has an algorithm that finds and ranks websites that have taken SEO seriously. Similarly, there is another algorithm that crawls through your content to properly index it. The spider program will crawl through your link and it just keeps going with all the links you have added to the site.
When the Spider program finishes crawling through your content, your website gets added to the Google index. Giving it an opportunity to show up in the search results.
Top reasons why Google hasn’t indexed your page
- Your website is new
When you have just launched your website, it takes some time to show up on the search results. Google can take anywhere from days to weeks for indexing your website. A common reason is that the spider program hasn’t reached your website yet. Furthermore, when your website is new, there is a limited number of quality inbound links.
Fix: To create website authority, you need more inbound links from trusted sources. It increases the chances of faster indexing.
- Due to the robots.txt file
Every website has a file called robots.txt. This is what instructs Google to not index certain URLs. Many websites have these during the initial stages of development when only a limited number of people can access the website.
Fix: Sometimes, it happens that the developer hasn’t removed the robots.txt file. So, remove them/alter them. Even your Google Console will let you know if this is the problem preventing your website from showing on the search results.
- Lack of high-quality backlinks
We all know how important it is to have backlinks for SEO. The same applies to Google indexing. For example, assume that you have two different websites. One has a backlink from HubSpot and the other has a backlink from an unreliable source. Obviously, the index program will crawl through the one with the link from HubSpot. Because it is a trusted platform.
Fix: Perform a simple analysis on your website to find all the links. Check whether they are all responsive and come from a good source. Replace broken links to improve the SEO as well as the chances of getting indexed soon.
- No internal links
The spider program crawls through your website one page over the other through links. When there are no internal links connecting all your pages, the program has no way to reach all the pages. This might be the issue that is preventing Google from indexing your website.
Fix: When you opt for a professional SEO service, they will create efficient internal links to create a smooth path for the spider program to crawl.
- Exceeded the crawl budget
Every website has a crawl budget. Depending on the authority you have, the value varies. It is basically the number of pages on your website that Google will crawl through per day. For popular websites, the crawl budget is naturally higher, and hence all that they publish appear on search results almost instantly.
Fix: For newer websites, it is not the case. Hence, you can optimize the use of your crawl budget by instructing the crawler to avoid certain pages. So that you can index your important pages faster.
Finally…
It is more common for Google to miss indexing your website than you think. And, there are even more methods to rectify them easily through expert help. Hence, always resort to professional website development to prevent these kinds of problems from happening in the future.
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