You’ve launched your website, you search for it on Google and… nothing. That’s normal for a brand-new site. Google has to find your pages, read them and add them to its index before they can show up. Here’s how to make that happen as quickly as possible.
First, check whether Google already knows about your site
Go to Google and search for site:yourdomain.com, replacing yourdomain.com with your website address.
- If you see your pages, Google has indexed at least some of them. You may just not be ranking for the searches you tried yet.
- If you see nothing, Google hasn’t indexed your site yet. Follow the steps below.
This search is a quick check, not an exact count. Google Search Console, below, gives you the real numbers.
Step 1: Make sure nothing is blocking search engines
Before anything else, rule out the two most common blockers:
- A “noindex” tag. Website builders and developers often hide a site from search engines while it’s being built. If the setting isn’t switched off at launch, Google is told not to index your pages. Look for a setting like “Discourage search engines” or “Hide from search engines” in your website platform.
- A blocking robots.txt file. Visit yourdomain.com/robots.txt. If you see
Disallow: /underUser-agent: *, your whole site is blocked from crawling.
Our free audit checks both in about a minute.
Step 2: Verify your site in Google Search Console
Google Search Console is free, and it’s the single most useful tool for getting a new site on Google.
- Open Google Search Console and sign in with your business’s Google account.
- Add your website. Choose a Domain property if you can: it covers every version of your site (with and without “www”, http and https). You verify it by adding a DNS TXT record at the company where you bought your domain.
- If DNS feels too technical, choose a URL prefix property instead and verify it with an HTML tag or file.
Step 3: Submit your sitemap
A sitemap is a list of all the pages on your site, written for search engines. Most website platforms create one for you, usually at yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml. In Search Console, open Sitemaps, enter the address and click Submit.
Step 4: Request indexing for your key pages
Paste your home page address into the URL Inspection bar at the top of Search Console. If it says the page isn’t on Google, click Request indexing. Do the same for your most important pages, like your main services. There’s a daily limit, and your sitemap covers the rest, so focus on the pages that matter most.
Step 5: Don’t forget Bing
Open Bing Webmaster Tools and choose to import your site from Google Search Console. It takes a couple of minutes and gets you into Bing search, which also feeds other products such as Microsoft Copilot.
If your website platform supports IndexNow, switch it on. It tells Bing and several other search engines whenever you add or update a page. Google doesn’t use IndexNow, so keep using Search Console for Google.
Step 6: Give Google reasons to come back
Search engines discover pages by following links. A brand-new site has very few, so help it along:
- Add your website link to your Google Business Profile.
- Link to it from your social media profiles.
- Ask partners, suppliers or your local chamber of commerce to list your business with a link.
- Keep adding useful pages, like individual service pages, so there’s more to crawl.
What if your pages still aren’t indexed?
In Search Console, open the Pages report (under Indexing). It shows which pages aren’t indexed and why. The most common reasons, in plain English:
| What Search Console says | What it usually means |
|---|---|
| Excluded by ‘noindex’ tag | Your page is telling Google not to index it. Remove the noindex setting. |
| Blocked by robots.txt | Your robots.txt file stops Google from crawling the page. |
| Discovered – currently not indexed | Google knows the page exists but hasn’t crawled it yet. Common for new sites; give it time and add internal links. |
| Crawled – currently not indexed | Google read the page and chose not to index it for now, often because it’s thin or similar to other pages. Make it more useful. |
| Duplicate without user-selected canonical | Google found several similar versions of the page. Set a canonical tag pointing to the main one. |
| Page with redirect | The address redirects somewhere else. That’s normal if intended. |
How long does it take?
For most new sites, the first pages appear within a few days to a few weeks. Showing up for your exact business name usually comes first. Ranking for competitive searches, like “electrician in Springfield”, takes longer and depends on your Business Profile, reviews, content and links.
If you’d rather have this done for you, our Launch Kit sets up Search Console, Bing, IndexNow and your sitemap, requests indexing for your key pages, and fixes anything blocking them, all within 7 business days. For the bigger picture, read our guide to SEO for a new website: the first 90 days.