Ready for Discovery
Diagnostic guide Website indexing

Discovery, crawling, and indexing are different states.

Ready for Discovery / Website not indexed by Google

01Question

Why is my website not indexed by Google?

Published is not the same as indexed.

A page can be live for people, available to Google's live test, listed in a sitemap, and still absent from Google's index.

The first job is to identify the page's recorded state. The explanation should come from the URL, server response, page instructions, internal links, sitemap, and Search Console evidence, not from a guess based on search results alone.

Discovery
Google knows the URL exists
Crawling
Google retrieves the URL
Indexing
Google processes and stores a selected page
02States

Read the evidence in order

The states are not interchangeable

Unknown or not yet discovered
The page may be new, absent from internal links, absent from a submitted sitemap, or otherwise not known to Google.
Discovered but not crawled
Google knows the URL but has not retrieved it. A crawl request or sitemap can report the URL; neither can promise when Google will crawl it.
Crawl blocked or fetch failed
Robots rules, authentication, server failures, redirect problems, or other access conditions can prevent Google from retrieving useful content.
Crawled but not indexed
Google fetched the page but did not add that URL to the index. The recorded reason, page content, duplication, and canonical signals must be examined before deciding what to change.
Alternate or canonicalized elsewhere
Google may treat another URL as the representative version. Inspect both the declared canonical and Google's selected canonical rather than assuming the tested URL should be indexed separately.
Indexed
The page is stored and eligible to appear, but indexing still does not guarantee that it will be shown for a particular search.
03Checks

One URL at a time

How to diagnose the page

  1. Confirm the preferred URL. Resolve HTTP versus HTTPS, www versus apex, trailing-slash variants, redirects, and duplicate page routes.
  2. Check the live response. The preferred page should return useful content with an appropriate status code and without a login wall.
  3. Read its instructions. Check robots access, noindex directives, and canonical declarations in the live HTML and headers.
  4. Find the discovery paths. Confirm that a normal site page links to it and that the sitemap contains the preferred canonical URL when appropriate.
  5. Use URL Inspection. Read Google's indexed record first, including discovery, crawl, and selected canonical. Then run the live test to evaluate the current version.
  6. Correct the stated defect. Verify the repair publicly. Request indexing for a small number of changed pages or submit an updated sitemap for many pages.
  7. Leave Google-controlled state open. A successful live test and accepted indexing request prove eligibility and submission, not the final indexing decision.
04Errors

What not to infer

Common diagnostic mistakes

  • A sitemap submission is a discovery signal, not proof that every listed page will be indexed.
  • A positive live test means the current page can probably be indexed; it does not mean the page is already indexed.
  • An indexed homepage does not prove that all service, portfolio, or article pages are indexed.
  • A page missing from one ordinary search result is not enough to identify its index state.
  • Repeated indexing requests do not repair a technical block, weak discovery path, or conflicting canonical.
05Related

The wider audit

06Contact

Direct contact

Bring the URL and its Search Console state.

Email gary@readyfordiscovery.com.