If you have searched for your own business and your website is nowhere to be found, take a breath. In most cases this is fixable, often in minutes, and usually without paying anyone.
I run an SEO business, so you might expect this page to tell you the problem is complicated and you need an expert. Most of the time you don’t. Below are the checks I run when someone sends me a “my website has vanished” email, in the order I run them. Work through them yourself. If you get to the end and you’re still stuck, there’s a way to get a free second pair of eyes at the bottom.
First: is your site actually missing, or just not ranking?
These are two different problems with two different fixes.
Type this into Google, replacing the domain with your own:
site:yourbusiness.co.ukIf pages appear, your site IS in Google. It’s indexed, it just isn’t ranking where you can see it. That’s a competition problem, not a technical one. Skip to the “indexed but invisible” section below.
If nothing appears, your site is not in Google’s index at all. Keep reading, the checks below will almost certainly find the cause.
Check 1: is the site new?
Google does not index new websites instantly. A brand new site can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks to appear, longer if nothing links to it. If your site went live in the last fortnight, the fix may simply be patience plus a nudge:
- Set up Google Search Console (free, takes ten minutes)
- Submit your sitemap (usually yourbusiness.co.uk/sitemap.xml)
- Use URL Inspection on your homepage and click Request Indexing
If your site is months old and still absent, something is blocking it. Keep going.
Check 2: the WordPress tickbox that hides thousands of UK businesses
If your site runs on WordPress, check this before anything else. Log in and go to:
Settings > Reading > “Discourage search engines from indexing this site”
If that box is ticked, your site is telling Google to stay away. Web designers tick it while building a site so half-finished pages don’t appear in search, and it is very common for it to be forgotten at launch. Untick it, save, then request indexing in Search Console.
I have seen established businesses trade for months with this box ticked, wondering why the phone stopped ringing.
Check 3: noindex tags and robots.txt
Same idea as the tickbox, but at page level. Two places to look:
robots.txt. Visit yourbusiness.co.uk/robots.txt in your browser. If you see Disallow: / under User-agent: *, your whole site is blocked from crawling. That line should not be there on a live site. It usually arrives with a copied staging configuration.
Noindex tags. View your homepage source (right click > View Page Source) and search for “noindex”. If you find <meta name="robots" content="noindex">, that page has been told to remove itself from Google. SEO plugins like Yoast and Rank Math can set this sitewide with one wrong toggle, so check the plugin settings too.
If you’re not comfortable reading page source, the URL Inspection tool in Search Console reports both problems in plain English: it will say “Excluded by noindex tag” or “Blocked by robots.txt”.
Check 4: did the site recently move, get redesigned, or change domain?
This is the most common cause of a site that WAS on Google and then disappeared. When URLs change and nothing redirects the old addresses to the new ones, Google treats the old pages as deleted and the new pages as strangers. Rankings built over years vanish.
Signs this is your problem:
- The drop happened within days or weeks of a redesign, rebrand or hosting move
- Old links to your site (from directories, social profiles, other websites) now show a 404 error
- Search Console shows a spike in “Not found (404)” errors
The fix is 301 redirects: every old URL should permanently redirect to its closest new equivalent. If your web designer did the migration, ask them directly whether redirects were set up. It is a standard part of the job, and its absence is the single most frequent thing I find when someone’s traffic falls off a cliff after a shiny new website. If this is what happened to you, this deserves its own article and I’m writing one. In the meantime, it is the first thing I look at in a free check.
Check 5: a Google penalty (rare, but check it)
Genuine penalties are much rarer than people fear, and they don’t happen for innocent reasons. But the check takes ten seconds: in Search Console, open Security & Manual Actions > Manual Actions. If it says “No issues detected”, you have not been penalised. Stop worrying about this one and go back to checks 2 to 4.
If there IS a manual action listed, Google will state the reason. That is one of the few situations on this page where professional help genuinely earns its money.
Indexed but invisible: when your site is on Google but nobody sees it
If the site: search found your pages, your problem is ranking, not indexing. Google knows you exist, it just doesn’t rank you where anyone looks. Position 40 and position 400 feel identical to your customers.
The uncomfortable truth: there is no quick tickbox fix for this one. Ranking is earned through relevance and reputation, and it responds to steady work rather than tricks:
- Your pages have to say what you do and where you do it. A homepage headline that says “Welcome” instead of “Plumber in Aylesbury” gives Google nothing to rank
- A Google Business Profile matters more than your website for local searches. The map results sit above the normal results, and reviews decide who wins there
- Other sites linking to yours is still how Google measures reputation. Directories, suppliers, trade bodies, local press
That is a longer conversation than this page, and it’s the actual work an SEO service does. Be wary of anyone who promises page 1 in a fortnight. If it were that easy, everyone would be there.
Still stuck? Send me your address
If you have worked through everything above and your site is still missing, something less common is going on: hosting issues, hacked pages, duplicate domains fighting each other, or something I haven’t listed.
Send your website address to me using the form belowe and I will take a look and reply with what I find and whether it’s something you can fix yourself. No charge, no obligation, no follow-up sales calls. Most of these checks take me a few minutes, and if the answer is “untick a box”, I’ll tell you which box.
Granta Network Solutions is based in Buckingham and works with small businesses across Buckinghamshire. If you’d rather talk it through, the contact page has the details.
FAQ
How long does it take for a new website to show on Google? Anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. Submitting a sitemap through Google Search Console usually speeds it up considerably.
Why does my website show on Bing but not Google? They are separate indexes with separate rules. A robots.txt block or noindex tag aimed at Google, a Google-specific penalty, or simply slower Google crawling can cause this split. Run the checks above; the cause is nearly always visible in Google Search Console.
Does it cost money to get listed on Google? No. Google’s organic listings and Google Business Profile are free. You never need to pay to be included, only if you choose to run ads.
My website shows when I search the business name but not for my services. Why? That’s the “indexed but invisible” situation above. Google knows who you are but doesn’t yet rank you for what you do. That is ranking work: clearer page targeting, a well-maintained Google Business Profile and reputation built over time.
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