First, find out which problem you have
Search for your exact domain
Type site:yourdomain.com into Google. No results at all usually means the site is not indexed. Results that appear only for your business name mean it is indexed but not ranking for the services you sell.
Open Search Console
Add and verify your site in Google Search Console if you have not. It is free and it is the only place Google tells you directly what it sees.
Read the Page indexing report
It lists indexed and not-indexed pages, and for each excluded page the reason Google gives.
Inspect one important page
The URL Inspection tool shows whether that page is on Google, when it was last crawled, and lets you request indexing after a fix.
What each "not indexed" reason means and what to do
| Reason in Search Console | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| URL marked 'noindex' | The page tells Google not to index it, often a setting left on from when the site was built. | Remove the noindex tag or the "discourage search engines" setting, then request indexing. |
| URL blocked by robots.txt | A rule in robots.txt stops Google crawling the page. | Remove the rule for pages you want found. |
| Discovered - currently not indexed | Google knows the page exists but has not crawled it yet. | Link to it from your important pages and make sure it is in your sitemap. Common on new or large sites. |
| Crawled - currently not indexed | Google read the page and chose not to index it. | Usually a quality or duplication signal: make the page more useful and distinct from your other pages. |
| Duplicate or alternate canonical | Google treats the page as a copy of another and indexes that one instead. | Check the canonical tag points where you intend, and merge near-identical pages. |
| Server error (5xx) or Not found (404) | The page failed to load or does not exist when Google tried. | Fix the server error or redirect the old address to its replacement. |
Reason names as they appear in Google's Page indexing report (Search Console Help), read 12 November 2026.
If you were showing and traffic dropped
Check tracking before rankings
A broken analytics tag after a site change can look like a traffic collapse. Compare Search Console clicks, which do not depend on your tracking, with your analytics.
A redesign or move without redirects
If page addresses changed and old ones were not redirected, the rankings they earned are lost. See how to redesign without losing rankings.
Pages dropped out of the index
Compare the indexed count in the Page indexing report with a month ago.
A Google update
If the drop lines up with an announced Google update and nothing on the site changed, improve the usefulness of the pages that lost ground rather than chasing quick fixes.
The searches themselves fell
Seasonal businesses lose impressions every off-season. Compare with the same month last year.
Does this affect AI answers too?
Yes. Google says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode: a page must be indexed and eligible to show in Search with a snippet, and normal SEO best practice still applies. A page that is not indexed cannot be used in Google's AI answers either. See AI search optimization for the other AI tools.
Questions people also ask
Why is my new website not showing on Google?
How do I check if Google has indexed my website?
What does "Discovered - currently not indexed" mean?
What does "Crawled - currently not indexed" mean?
Why does my business show on Google Maps but not my website?
Sources
- Page indexing report (Search Console Help) read 2026-11-12
- AI features and your website (Google Search Central) read 2026-11-12
Facts and prices checked . Next review February 2027.