Why am I not showing up on Google?

First, check whether Google has your site at all

Type site: followed by your domain into Google, with no space between them. If it returns nothing, Google does not have your pages and nothing else on this page matters yet.

The most common cause by a distance is a noindex tag left switched on from when the site was being built. It is a single line of code that tells search engines to ignore the page, it is standard practice during development, and it gets forgotten at launch more often than anybody in this industry likes to admit. The other causes are a robots.txt file blocking crawlers, a site so new nothing has linked to it yet, or pages with no internal link pointing at them.

You are probably looking at the map, not the search

For most local searches Google shows a small set of map results above the ordinary links. Those come from Google Business Profiles, not from websites, and they are a separate competition with separate rules.

Being absent from that box is a different problem from being absent from the links underneath it, and it is worth knowing which one you have before you pay anyone to fix either. How the map results are ranked covers that half.

Distance is a ranking factor you cannot argue with

Google shows results near the person searching. That means two things owners routinely get wrong when they test.

Searching from inside your own shop is not a test, because you are the closest business in the county. Searching for your own business name is not a test either, because almost every business wins its own name. The only honest test is searching for the service, without your name, from where your customers actually are.

Your details do not match everywhere they appear

Your business name, address and phone number appear in more places than you remember: your profile, your site, old directory listings, a chamber page, a supplier page, a review site somebody set up for you. When those disagree, the signal splits.

An old suite number, a phone number you stopped using two years ago, or a listing under a slightly different business name is enough to cost you position in a close race. It is unglamorous work and it is often the cheapest win available.

You have no page about the thing they searched for

A homepage that lists eleven services ranks properly for none of them. Google matches a search to a page, not to a business, and a page that mentions your service in a bullet point is not a page about that service.

One page per service you actually sell is the most reliable structural fix there is, and it is usually the difference between showing up for the phrase somebody typed and showing up for nothing. The same logic applies to areas, with a warning attached: see service area pages, and how to avoid the doorway-page penalty.

And sometimes you are simply being outworked

If the businesses above you have more reviews, more pages, older domains and more people linking to them, they are above you for a reason and it will take real time to change. That is the one item on this list that is measured in months rather than days.

It is also the one most often sold first, because it is the one nobody can hold you to a date on. Read how long SEO actually takes before you sign anything with a timeline in it.

What to check today, in order

• Search site:yourdomain.com. If nothing comes back, that is the whole problem.
• Search your service plus your town from a phone that is not in your shop.
• Note whether you are missing from the map results, the links, or both.
• Open your Google Business Profile and confirm the primary category is the right one.
• Search your business name and look for old listings with the wrong phone number or address.
• Count how many pages on your site are about one service each. If the answer is zero, start there.