Why Your Site Does Not Show Up In Search Engine Results

I'm often asked the question "Why does my site not show up when I search for it?" Most of the time its because you're not competitive enough. If your site does rank for brand terms or your domain name but you're wondering why you're not showing up for generic product or service terms then head over to my previous post - 10 Reasons Why Your Site Doesn’t Rank For *Insert Keyword*

Alternatively, if you're using brand search times or your actual domain name and you're still not coming up in search, then I think its safe for you to start panicking. So what could be the issue? Unfortunately, there is no single diagnosis, and it can be one or a combination of things.

To guide you on your way back into Google's good books I've put together a list of the most common faux pas that could have you banned from search results.

Spam links

So you thought you would be smart and buy a whole bunch of links from a link builder without reviewing their authenticity or if they make sense for your website. Well, that sort of reckless behaviour is not becoming of a website owner.Buying links is never a good idea especially if you're working with doggy link builders you could end up with tons of spam links that will get you de-indexed. 

Enjoy going through all those links and disavowing the bad ones, it's probably the most painful process, and SEO or site owner can go through.

No index meta tags

Site owners can prevent a page from appearing in Google Search by including a noindex meta tag in the page's HTML code, or by returning a 'noindex' header in the HTTP request. When Googlebot next crawls that page and see the tag or header, Googlebot will drop that page entirely from Google Search results, regardless of whether other sites link to it. This is usually used while you're working on a site in production and don't want Google to find it just yet.

Blocked by robots.txt

While no index meta tags offer users greater flexibility on what Google should ignore some site owners may just want to use a blanket rule. This is where the robots file comes in. It offers search engine crawlers direct instructions on how to deal with your website. If your robots file set to disallow, then crawlers will ignore your site.

Blocking resources

Googlebot is not merely an old text-based scrapper it has become more advanced over the years and needs access to many resources on your page to render and index the page optimally. For example, JavaScript, CSS, and image files should be available to Googlebot so that it can see pages like an average user.

 If a site's robots.txt file disallows crawling these resources, it can affect how well Google renders and indexes the page, which can affect the page's ranking in Google search or have you de-indexed.

Blocked by login

Some sites require users to log in with a username and password to access their content and roadblock users who don't. In certain cases, these roadblocks can also stop search engine crawlers from spidering and indexing your site.

DNS issues

In certain cases, crawlers are not able to communicate with the DNS server when they've tried to access your website. This could be because the DNS server is unavailable or there is an issue with the DNS routing to your domain. To fix this issue, ensure that your DNS provider is not blocking Googlebot, perhaps inadvertently.

Firewalls

In some cases, a misconfigured firewall or DoS protection system (sometimes the site's content management system) block Googlebot from crawling the website. Protection systems are an important part of good hosting and are often configured to automatically block unusually high levels of server requests. However, because Googlebot often makes more requests than a human user, it can trigger these protection systems, causing them to block Googlebot and prevent it from crawling your website.

To fix such issues, identify which part of your website’s infrastructure is blocking Googlebot and remove the block. The firewall may not be under your control, so you may need to discuss this with your hosting provider.

Duplicate content

Did you copy and paste all your content from a competitors website? If you did, shame on you! Duplicate content is a big no-no in the eyes of the search engine police, and if you're found guilty, you will be sentenced to a digital prison where no one will find you.

Blackhat SEO tactics

I will not go into details about the dark arts of SEO in this post, but tactics like cloaking, link farms, automated content, keyword stuffing, bot linking, hidden copy or links and more are frowned upon. These strategies are misleading and can quickly get you banned from Google and shipped off to the dreaded supplemental index.

Redirect chains

It pains me to mention this one as a reason your site isn't indexed, but I feel I have to. In all my years of auditing websites, I shouldn't be surprised at things people do to their sites yet this one still baffles me. Redirects can be one of the most powerful tools in an SEO's arsenal when used correctly but using unnecessary redirects also make it more difficult for bots to crawl the site, which can affect how well pages are indexed. Search crawlers may give up if it encounters too many redirects or redirects chains so watch out and use your redirects wisely.

Get access to the index

If you're still unsure of what the problem could be after going through this list, then I highly recommend you speak to a professional SEO and have them audit your site immediately.

Contact us

If you want to know more about search engine marketing for your site, don’t be shy we’re happy to assist. Simply contact us

Tags: Google Search, Search Analytics, SEO