Updated 05/06/2025

If your website isn’t showing up on Google, it’s often due to indexing or crawling issues. In this guide, we’ll walk through real troubleshooting steps, including a case study, to help get your website back into search results.

Understanding Indexing & Crawling

Before we dive into fixes, it’s key to understand the basics:

  • Crawling: Search engine bots (like Googlebot) visit your website to scan its content and structure.
  • Indexing: After crawling, pages are stored in Google’s index and may appear in search results.

If Google can’t crawl or index your pages, your site won’t rank no matter how good your content is.

Why Your Site Might Not Be Indexed

Some common reasons include:

  • noindex tags in the meta or robots.txt file
  • Blocked access to bots
  • Poor internal linking or missing sitemap
  • Duplicate or plagiarized content
  • Slow page speed or mobile usability issues

Case Study: Solving Indexing Issues

We recently helped a client whose website wasn’t appearing in search results.

Step 1: Test If Google Can Access Your Site

Use the Google Rich Results Test to check crawlability.

URL unavailable, crawl failed on June 5, 2025.
result with “noindex” warning

We found a noindex tag detected by Googlebot but it wasn’t obvious where it was set.

Step 2: Use Google Search Console & Site Tools

  • We checked Search Console > URL Inspection to view how Google sees the page.
  • In WordPress, we confirmed Search Engine Visibility was unchecked.
  • We checked RankMath settings, which looked fine.
  • Then we manually viewed the page source:
    Ctrl + F → search <meta name="robots" ✅ The tag showed: index, follow, max-snippet:-1... which is correct.

Still no luck the site wasn’t updating.

Step 3: Clear Your Caches

Sometimes the issue isn’t your site it’s the cached version Google or your browser is seeing.

We cleared:

  • Litespeed plugin (object + internal cache)
  • Cloudflare cache
LiteSpeed Cache CDN cache cleared confirmation message.
LiteSpeed Cache Cleared
LiteSpeed Cache successfully communicated with Cloudflare.
Cloudflare cache cleared via LiteSpeed Cache

After clearing everything, we waited 30 seconds and ran the test again and finally saw success.

Other Fixes & Checks

  • Check robots.txt with a validator tool
  • Submit an updated sitemap to Google Search Console
  • Fix internal links, broken pages, or redirects
  • Remove duplicate or outdated content
  • Check for mobile usability errors (also in GSC)

How to Stay Indexed

  • Make sure your site is crawlable and not blocked by accident
  • Fix any indexing errors found in Google Search Console
  • Clear all server-side and browser-side caches
  • Regularly update and audit your website

Final Tip

If you’re still stuck, speak with an SEO specialist sometimes it’s not a single issue but a combination that blocks your site from ranking.

✉️ Need help? Contact us for an SEO audit

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