Website Not Found on Google: 8 Causes + Self-Test

The website is online, it looks good, and still nobody finds it. Before you spend money: check these eight causes. You can manage the self-tests without any technical know-how.

1. Google does not even know your site exists

Self-test: Type this into Google: site:your-domain.ch. Do any results appear? If not, your site is not in Google’s index, which is common with brand-new websites or when a “please do not display” setting is accidentally switched on (this happens more often than you would think, for example when a test setting gets forgotten after launch).

2. You are found, but only by your company name

Self-test: Do not search for your name, search the way a customer would: “plumber emergency Winterthur”, “trustee for associations”. Do you show up? The company name is the easy part, the service searches are where the business is.

3. Your site does not answer any search questions

Google shows pages that answer questions. If your website only says who you are but never what you solve and for whom, in the words your customers actually use, there is nothing to find. This is the single most common cause, and it is not a technical one.

4. The site is too slow

Load time is a ranking factor and a reason people bounce. Self-test: pagespeed.web.dev, enter your address. Scores below 50 in the “Performance” section are a real problem, and our load time article explains why.

5. Unusable on a phone

Google evaluates the mobile version of your site. Self-test: open your website on your phone. Do you have to zoom? Does anything overlap? Then Google sees the same thing.

6. Every page is called the same

Self-test: look at the browser tabs of your subpages. Does every one just say “Home” or the company name? These titles are the first thing Google reads, and they need to say what each page is actually about.

7. Technical brakes from the website builder

Website builder pages carry invisible ballast, and when it comes to technical fine-tuning the provider sets the limits. Not an automatic knockout, but a starting disadvantage that we assess honestly in our website builder comparison.

8. The competition simply does it better

Sometimes your own site is fine, the competitors just answer the search questions in more detail, faster, more clearly. Then no trick helps, only better content does. Our article How long does SEO take? tells you honestly how long that takes.

What now?

Two or three of these causes you can tackle yourself after reading this list, so do those first. For the rest: we analyse your website and tell you, in plain language, what is good, what is missing and what it would be worth. By the way: you probably found this article through Google just now, and that is exactly what we do for you. The price calculator gives you the ballpark in two minutes.