Indexation: help! My site does not appear in Google

If your site does not appear in Google’s results, it is most certainly because it is not indexed or because it has been penalized. Code problem, page protection, misplaced meta noindex… we have identified for you the causes that can prevent a site from being fully or partially referenced.

Your website has just been put online.

In the case of putting a new site online or creating a new page, indexing by robots can take several days, so you will need to be patient before you get alarmed.

Tip 1: If, after more than a week, you notice that your site is still not indexed, you can submit its URL manually on the Google Search Console, but don’t insist on doing so, once will be enough because google doesn’t like to feel forced.

Tip 2: To find out if your site is present in search engine results, type a query in the search bar of your browser: site:domainname.lu (without https:// and without www.) and check that the different pages and subpages of your site have been indexed.

Tip 3: If you want to increase the indexing speed of your website, create a sitemap and add it to your robots.txt file or send it directly to the Google Search Console. The online service xml-sitemaps.com offers a free basic version that can help you create your sitemap. However, for complex and voluminous sites, it is better not to do without professional advice.

The tools offered by your favorite search engine will be very useful to you, do not hesitate to check the Search Console regularly to make sure that everything is going well on your site and that Googlebot is able to index your content.

Your subdomain is not consulted by robots.

Some sites may have two addresses simultaneously:

one of type https://www.domainname.lu
and the other in the form of https://domainname.lu.

Since both addresses are logically monitored by search engine robots, it is better to clarify things in order to keep only one address in the long run.

Set up a redirection from one address to another using an.htaccess file, you then have to go back to your Google Search Console and indicate in the settings the subdomain that should appear in the results.

Some pages of your site are not indexed.

It is normal – and even desirable – in some very specific cases, to tell crawler robots not to index certain pages of a site. This is particularly the case for:

• Pages with poor or non-existent content whose indexing would negatively impact the overall quality of a site.
• Pages with duplicated content (even if it is necessary to chase down duplicated content, there are sometimes redundant content such as product descriptions in an e-shop that can be very similar for products with similar characteristics)
• Pages to which access is protected by a password.

The Noindex and Nofollow tags fulfill this function, it is up to you to ensure, once again thanks to the search console, that they are placed in the right place (in the head section of the concerned pages) and on the right pages. You can also use the free version of My Ranking Metrics to find out which pages on your site are not indexed.

Your site has been penalized.

If your site does not meet Google Panda or Google Penguin criteria, it may be penalized. The purchase of links, duplication of content, excessive loading time, lack of a responsive design version or over-optimization are some of the practices sanctioned by search engines.

The penalties imposed by google are of several types:

• The Sandbox actually it is not really a penalty but more a preventive treatment that google applies to new sites that have just been put online by limiting their positioning on the basis of a limited number of keywords.
• Decommissioning. If you notice a decrease in your positions in the results pages; you are downgraded. This penalty consists in causing a site to lose several places in the results pages. Non-compliance with certain rules, over-optimization, duplication of content, obsolete site, lack of a responsive design version of your site… are all possible explanations that lead to the deindexation of some of the words or entire pages of your site. This penalty is temporary and everything will return to normal once the errors are corrected.
• The black list. No need to explain you will have understood it; it is the sanction. Google no longer returns any results containing your site, it no longer exists for Google, but rest assured that this sanction is not necessarily definitive. If this is the case, start disabling all inappropriate backlinks you have put in place, correct the overexploitation of keywords and replace all duplicated content with fresh and unique content.

Once you have made these changes, go back to the Google Search Console and send a review form to your favorite search engine.

To conclude.

If you have all the necessary skills to solve these problems, well done! We are delighted to have been able to help you.

If this is not the case or if you have any difficulties in solving them, do not hesitate to contact us, as experts, we will be happy to provide you with a free diagnosis to solve your indexing problems.