Google Index Checker

Google's search engine works in three stages: crawl, index, rank. Crawling is when Googlebot downloads your page. Indexing is when Google decides the page is worth storing in its searchable database. Ranking is where it shows up for a query.

A page can be crawled but not indexed — this is one of the most common (and most misunderstood) reasons small business sites get zero Google traffic. Google saw the page, looked at it, and decided not to keep it. Usually because the content is too thin, too similar to other pages on the web, or because a technical signal told Google to skip it.

If your site isn't indexed, no amount of "SEO work" — keywords, backlinks, schema — will help. Indexing is the gate. This checker tells you whether you're past the gate.

1. A noindex tag on the page. The single most common cause. Often left over from a staging site or a website builder's "hide from search engines" toggle. We check for this in both the HTML <meta> and the X-Robots-Tag HTTP header.

2. robots.txt blocks Googlebot. A Disallow: / rule in /robots.txt stops crawling entirely. Some hosts and builders ship a default robots.txt that blocks crawlers in dev mode and forget to flip it for production.

3. The site is too new. Brand-new domains can take 4 days to 4 weeks to appear in the index without any submission. Submitting your sitemap in Google Search Console cuts this to a few days.

4. Thin or duplicate content. If every page is 50 words of generic copy, or your pages look near-identical to thousands of other sites (typical for unedited template sites), Google may crawl and skip them.

5. Server errors or slow responses. If Googlebot gets a 500 error or your site takes 15 seconds to respond, it will give up and not index. We measure your homepage response time as part of the check.

Start with the checker results — work the failures from top to bottom. Most fixes take less than ten minutes.

Then go to Google Search Console (free, search.google.com/search-console) and add your domain. Submit your sitemap URL (usually yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml). For any individual page that won't index, paste the URL into the top search bar of Search Console and click "Request indexing" — Google usually crawls within 24 hours.

If pages keep being crawled but not indexed (Search Console will say "Discovered — currently not indexed" or "Crawled — currently not indexed"), the issue is content quality, not technical. Expand the page with unique, useful information — aim for at least 300 words of original text that genuinely helps a reader. Generic boilerplate from a template will not get indexed.