Pages missing from Google? 7 indexing checks to run

You published a page, but it doesn’t show up in Google, even when you search for its exact title. Before rewriting anything, check whether the page is indexed at all. These seven checks find the most common causes.

1. Inspect the URL in Search Console

Paste the page’s address into the URL Inspection tool in Google Search Console. It tells you whether the page is indexed and, if not, usually why. This is the fastest place to start.

2. Look for a noindex tag

View the page source and search for “noindex”. A robots meta tag or an X-Robots-Tag header with noindex tells search engines to keep the page out. It’s often left behind from a staging site or set by a plugin.

3. Check robots.txt

Open yoursite.com/robots.txt. A Disallow rule covering the page’s path stops search engines from crawling it. Rules like “Disallow: /” left over from development block the whole site.

4. Check the canonical tag

If the page’s canonical tag points to a different URL, you’re telling Google the other page is the main version. Make sure each page you want indexed points to itself.

5. Make sure it’s linked

Pages that no other page links to are hard for search engines to discover. Link to the page from relevant pages on your site, and from your navigation if it’s important.

6. Check it’s in your sitemap

Your XML sitemap should list every page you want indexed, and nothing that redirects or no longer exists. Submit it in Search Console.

7. Ask whether the page adds something

If Search Console says “Crawled – currently not indexed”, Google found the page but chose not to index it. That often means the page is thin, or too similar to other pages. Make it more useful, or merge it with a similar page.

Once you’ve fixed it

Use URL Inspection to request indexing, then give it a few days. If several pages are affected, the cause is usually site-wide: a template, a plugin setting or a robots rule.

Finding and fixing indexing problems is the first part of our technical SEO work, and we make the fixes in your site ourselves.

Read more about our Technical SEO service.