Why is my website not on Google?
June 25th, 2010 by GaryTweet
It’s a question we hear a lot – mainly from clients that we’re building a “first” website for.
Why is my website not in Google yet? Something must be wrong…
While all us experts may laugh at the naivety of such a question, for many clients the relationship between Google and their site isn’t so obvious. Many people think Google IS the web.. and that if a site isn’t on Google, it’s not on the web.
In reality – Websites do NOT enter google automatically… They enter Google because Google Discovers them, and “indexes” them. Until then, your website can be alive and well, but only discoverable by typing it directly into your web browsers address bar.
In most cases, Google can take days, weeks, or months to “find” new websites, and so they won’t appear in Google until then. You can speed this up in 3 ways..
- Submit the site directly to Google. See: http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/submit_content.html
- Signup to Google Webmaster Tools, and submit an actual “sitemap” for all the pages on your site. See: http://www.google.com/webmasters/
- Get other sites (which are already listed in Google) to link to your site. Google will then “follow” that link next time it “spiders” the other site.
Doing any (or all) of the above should see your website listed in the Google results within a few weeks at most… Getting it listed HIGH UP the results pages depends on how optimised your site is for specific keywords and phrases. Search Engine Optimisation and understanding search keywords is an effort in itself, but you should be able to easily cover the basics of SEO yourself. We’re always here to help if you need us!