10 Reasons Your Web Design Isn't Getting Indexed by Google

Vũ Khôi

Author at Wotech Electronics Blog

Google not indexing your website means all that hard work goes to waste

Web design is a whole journey — from design and coding to content ideation — with the goal of delivering the best possible user experience. But for people to discover your web design project, in most cases it has to show up on search engine results pages, the most popular being Google. In fact, Google has become so ubiquitous that it is no longer just the name of a tech company or a piece of software — it has become a verb recognized around the world, as in "Just Google it to find out what SEO services are".

It would therefore be a real shame if your website never caught Google's attention and never got indexed. But what is actually causing your web design to have this problem? Take a look and check whether your website suffers from any of the following 10 mistakes!

#1 Your website design doesn't have both the www and non-www domains

For visitors to your website, it is hard to tell the difference between a URL starting with http:// and one starting with http://www, since both domains return the same page. But if you are the owner of a web design project, you need to understand that these two domains are not the same thing. The domain containing www is a subdomain of the root domain, and — importantly — robots will treat them as two independent websites. So be careful to redirect the landing pages of both domains to a single site; otherwise you will run into duplicate content issues (copying content across your website).

#2 Your website's sitemap has a problem

Once your website design is complete, the next step if you want your site to appear on Google is to wait for the Google robot to visit your website. This usually takes at least a few days, but if your site still hasn't been indexed after more than a week, it means your sitemap has a problem preventing the Google robot from accessing it. If the sitemap is faulty, find a way to fix it. If you don't have a sitemap yet, create one immediately, then go to Webmaster Tools and ask Google to send its robot to crawl your website.

#3 Your web design is blocking the Google robot from visiting

Robots.txt files are the main reason the Google bot cannot enter your website. However, developers sometimes need these files to prevent robots from indexing a particular page while they are repairing or upgrading the site. Your job, then, is to take a tour of your website and remove any robot.txt files that exist without a specific reason. Then wait for the Google bot to come — this takes a few days, so don't be too impatient.

#4 The Google bot runs into trouble while crawling your web design

Occasionally, your web design isn't indexed because of a Google bot error. You can spot this by noticing that your homepage has been, or is being, indexed while the other pages are not. What you need to do is go to Google Webmaster Tools and check the list of pages that are having indexing problems. Most Google indexing failures are caused by robot.txt files (as mentioned in #3), but they can also stem from DNS or server errors. In any case, all of these issues can be fixed fairly easily.

#5 Your web design has duplicate content

Duplicate content is a dangerous mistake you must avoid if you want to appear on Google's search results pages. If the Google bot visits your website and detects duplicated content, its crawler becomes confused and will immediately stop indexing your entire website design. That's why you should promptly remove any duplicated content — or, alternatively, use robots.txt files to block the Google bot from those pages, or use a 301 redirect to point it elsewhere.

#6 Your web design has page-loading problems

Slow page loading will cost your website its chance of being indexed by Google. You can improve this by enabling caching, resizing images that are too large, or installing some applications to speed up your web design. You should also review your hosting, because there is a chance the hosting for your website is unreliable, keeping the site from running smoothly and interrupting the Google bot's indexing.

#7 The website's language isn't optimized

HTML, JavaScript and AJAX are the languages most commonly used for website design. Of these, HTML is considered the language Google indexes the fastest. JavaScript and AJAX, although both supported by Google, take the Google bot considerably longer to index. If your website is built with JavaScript or AJAX and its structure isn't designed correctly, the Google bot will postpone indexing your site.

#8 Google indexing is blocked by htaccess or certain privacy settings

If your website is built on the WordPress CMS, there is a good chance you have accidentally enabled one or more privacy settings. Or you may have enabled htaccess on your server. While these files are useful in most cases, they can sometimes obstruct the indexing process.

#9 Your website's meta tags accidentally carry a Noindex or Nofollow tag

Like robots.txt, these two directives are used to hide your website from the Google bot. So check your website's code to see whether your pages carry a Noindex or Nofollow tag, and change or remove them if you want the Google bot to index those pages.

#10 Your website has been penalized by Google's algorithms

When Google penalizes websites, the search engine can lower the site's ranking on the results page, and the website's visibility and traffic will drop accordingly. However, Google rarely removes a web design it has already indexed, unless you have made a very serious mistake, so there is no need to worry too much about this. Once your site is indexed, you will find it on Google soon enough. But if your website ranks low, it may simply still be new, have a young domain — or it may have been penalized. Whatever the issue, if you keep doing SEO services for your website well over the long term, you will be able to overcome all of these problems.

We hope the 10 reasons Markdao has just laid out help you understand why some website designs haven't been indexed by Google, and how to fix those errors. We hope you found this article useful, and see you in the next ones.

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