Website not showing up on Google? Four reasons in Search Console, and what to do about each

Status and menu names are given as they appear in Search Console, and what they mean is quoted from Google’s help. The WordPress setting is quoted from the WordPress admin. Everything was read on October 26, 2026, with a source next to each item. Google can rename a button or a status; if yours reads differently, look in the same place in the menu.

First: does Google know your store at all

Search Google for site:yourstore.com, then site:yourstore.com product name. If store pages come up, Google knows the store. Don’t count pages this way: “The list of URLs returned is not always exhaustive” (Google, site: operator).

A reliable answer for one page comes from Google Search Console, Google’s free tool for site owners. If you don’t have it, create an account and verify that the store is yours. Then paste a product page address into URL inspection to see whether it is on Google, and if not, why.

Where Search Console gives the reason

Under Indexing → Pages there is a table, “Why pages aren’t indexed”, with the sentence that matters here above it: “Pages that aren’t indexed can’t be served on Google”. Each row is one reason; click it to see the addresses.

Not every page in that list is a problem. Google says so directly: “Don’t expect every URL on your site to be indexed. Some URLs might be duplicates or might not contain meaningful information. Just be sure that the key pages on your site are indexed” (Search Console Help, Page indexing report). In a store, the key pages are product pages and categories. Look for their addresses in the four rows below.

Reason 1: “Excluded by ‘noindex’ tag”

Your store is asking Google not to show the page. Google: “If you do not want this page indexed, congratulations! If you do want this page to be indexed, you should remove the ‘noindex’ directive” (Help, as above).

Cart, checkout and My account belong here. WooCommerce itself asks search engines not to index those three pages (in the WooCommerce code: “Disable search engines indexing core, dynamic, cart/checkout pages”, version 11.2.1). It is a problem when products or categories show up in this row.

WordPress: Settings → Reading, the “Search engine visibility” section. “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” must be unchecked. That one box covers the whole store. It gets checked while a store is being built, and sometimes stays on after launch. When it is checked, the WordPress dashboard says in the “At a Glance” box: “Search engines discouraged”. If your store has an SEO plugin, check its visibility settings for products and categories too.

Other platforms have a similar search engine visibility setting, usually under SEO or store settings.

After the change, go back to URL inspection, paste the page address, and click Request indexing.

Reason 2: “Not found (404)”

There is no page at that address. In a store, that is usually a deleted product, or a product whose address changed. Google: “In general, we recommend fixing only 404 errors that you link to yourself or list in a sitemap. If a page has been moved, you should return a 3XX redirect to the new page” (Help, as above).

• The product has a replacement (a new model, the same item at a new address): redirect the old address to the new one. A customer arriving from Google or from an old link sees the product instead of an error. WooCommerce has no redirects in its admin; you need a redirect plugin.
• No replacement: the error can stay. Just remove links to that page from your own store: menus, descriptions and related products.
• The product will be back in stock: don’t delete it, mark it out of stock. The page stays at the same address.

The report only shows URLs “that have shown 404 errors in the past month” (Help, as above), so old errors drop off on their own.

Reason 3: “Duplicate without user-selected canonical”

Google treats the page as a copy of another one, and only shows the other: “This page is a duplicate of another page, although it doesn’t indicate a preferred canonical page. Google has chosen the other page as the canonical for this page, and so will not serve this page in Search”. And what to do if it isn’t a copy: “you should ensure that the content differs substantially between the two pages” (Help, as above).

In a store, that is for example several products sharing one description: the same shoes in four colors as four separate products, or a supplier’s description imported across a whole range. Usually it is enough to add to each product what the others don’t have: dimensions, material, what’s in the box, what it fits. Four colors of one product are usually one product with variations, not four products with one description (The same description on several products).

Not every duplicate needs fixing. Google doesn’t index “pages that are inappropriate to index them (for example, variations of a page with different filters applied)”, so a category address with a sort order or a filter in this row is fine.

Next to it you may see “Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user”: the page points to itself as the right one, but Google decided another page is better and indexed that one. The advice is the same: content that differs substantially.

Reason 4: “Crawled - currently not indexed”

Google visited the page but hasn’t added it: “The page was crawled by Google but not indexed. It may or may not be indexed in the future; no need to resubmit this URL for crawling” (Help, as above).

Google gives no reason here. Nobody outside Google can tell you for sure why that page didn’t make it, us included. What you do control is the content of the product page, and Google itself says some URLs “might not contain meaningful information”:

• A one-line description answers none of a customer’s questions. Add the dimensions, the material, what’s in the box, what it fits (A description too short to answer anything).
• The manufacturer’s paragraph, the same one other stores use, doesn’t set your page apart from any of them. Two or three lines of your own about the specifics say more than a copied text.
• One description on several of your own products, as in reason 3.

After a change: URL inspection → Request indexing. Google: “Requesting a crawl does not guarantee that inclusion in search results will happen instantly or even at all. Our systems prioritize the fast inclusion of high quality, useful content”. “Crawling can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks”, and “requesting a recrawl multiple times for the same URL won’t get it crawled any faster”. There is a quota for requests (Google, ask Google to recrawl your URLs), so start with the products that sell best.

Other statuses in that table

• “Discovered - currently not indexed”: Google knows the address but hasn’t crawled it yet: “Typically, Google wanted to crawl the URL but this was expected to overload the site; therefore Google rescheduled the crawl”. With a new store or new products, waiting is usually enough.
• “Page with redirect”: the address redirects elsewhere, so it won’t be indexed itself: “As such, this URL will not be indexed. The target URL of the redirect might or might not be indexed”. For a redirect from an old address to a new one, that is exactly what should happen.
• “Alternate page with proper canonical tag”: the page correctly points to another, indexed version, “so there is nothing you need to do”.

Quotes: Search Console Help, Page indexing report.

Check the descriptions in your store

The same description on many products and one-line descriptions are visible from the outside, without your admin. The no-install store check reads the public catalog of a WooCommerce store and, for descriptions, shows:

• products with an identical description: the same text on many product pages, of which a search engine picks one;
• products with a description under 200 characters.

No install, no account, no access to your admin. On a large catalog it checks a sample and says so in the result. The whole catalog is checked by the free Merchlint plugin (“Description too short”); descriptions repeated across several products are listed by its Pro add-on. The plugin only reads and changes nothing in your store.

Questions

Why is my page not showing up on Google, even though it’s in my store?

Search Console gives the reason: Indexing → Pages, the “Why pages aren’t indexed” table, or URL inspection for a single page. For a store, it is most often one of the four statuses above: noindex, 404, duplicate, and “Crawled - currently not indexed”.

How long does it take Google to add a new product?

After a request, Google says “Crawling can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks”, and doesn’t guarantee that the page gets in at all. Requesting the same address again and again won’t speed it up.

Can I force Google to index a page?

No. You can remove what blocks it (the “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” box, or a similar setting on your platform), improve the content, and ask Google to look again. The decision is Google’s.

Is “Crawled - currently not indexed” a penalty?

No. It means Google visited the page and hasn’t added it for now, and may add it later. Google’s help lists nothing to fix for this status and says there is no need to resubmit the URL. A request for indexing makes sense after you change the page.