Why your website isn't showing up on Google: the 9 causes, checked in order

Who this is for: Founders and operators who launched with an AI builder or no-code tool and need to know whether Google can actually see the site.

The panic is understandable: the site opens in your browser, but searching the brand, title, or a phrase from the page produces nothing useful. That gap is usually not one single SEO trick. It is a chain of crawl, index, canonical, metadata, and trust checks.

AI builders make launch feel instant, but they do not automatically prove that the final production URL is crawlable, canonical, useful, and connected to Search Console.

Do the checks in order. If the page is noindexed, blocked, redirected badly, or duplicated across hosts, rewriting the headline will not fix the visibility problem.

Start with this diagnosis

The target query for this guide is New business sites that are live but absent from Google results.. That matters because a good fix should match the real search or buyer problem, not a generic SEO scorecard. Treat this as a launch-readiness pass: find the blocker, fix the smallest useful thing, publish, then verify from the live URL.

For AI-built sites, the visible design often gets ahead of the operational details. The homepage might look polished while the browser title is generic, the canonical points at the wrong host, the images are heavier than they need to be, or the copy avoids the facts a buyer needs. That is why the checks below are ordered from technical blockers to trust and persuasion.

What to check, in order

1. Open the exact live URL in a private window and confirm it does not require a login, preview token, or unpublished builder session.
2. View the page source or rendered HTML and look for a robots noindex tag, an unexpected canonical URL, and a useful title tag.
3. Check that the HTTP version and www version redirect once to the preferred HTTPS host.
4. Search Google for site:yourdomain.com and for a quoted sentence from the homepage, then treat the results as clues rather than final proof.
5. Add the site to Search Console, inspect the canonical homepage URL, and request indexing only after the live test is clean.
6. Make sure the homepage has enough specific crawlable text to explain who the site is for, what it offers, and why it can be trusted.

Do not skip the order. If Google cannot crawl the final URL, a better description will not help. If buyers cannot verify the business, a faster hero image will not earn trust. If the copy is generic, a new animation will not make the offer more credible.

What not to do

• Do not submit every URL repeatedly before checking whether the page is indexable.
• Do not add keyword-stuffed paragraphs that a buyer would never read.
• Do not keep both builder preview domains and production domains linked from the live site.

The point is not to make the site bigger. The point is to remove confusion. Most AI-built sites improve fastest when you preserve the useful parts of the generated design and replace vague defaults with exact settings, real proof and clearer next actions.

A 20-minute workflow

Start with the live production URL and write down what you expect a stranger to understand in the first screen: the audience, the problem, the offer, the proof, and the next action. Then compare that expectation with what the page actually exposes to a crawler, a keyboard user, and a skeptical buyer. This keeps the work grounded in evidence instead of taste.

Spend the first five minutes on access and indexability. The page should load without a preview token, return a normal success status, avoid noindex directives, and point canonical signals at the same URL you want people to share. Spend the next five minutes on metadata and page structure: title, description, H1, headings, internal links, and whether the important copy is real text rather than only visual decoration.

Use the next five minutes for trust and action. Look for the contact path, policy links, business context, proof you can stand behind, and the form or CTA state after a visitor clicks. Use the final five minutes for mobile speed and accessibility basics. That order is deliberately boring, because boring checks catch the problems that make a finished-looking AI-built site underperform.

1. Check the exact live URL, including host, protocol and path.
2. Confirm the page explains new business sites that are live but absent from google results. in visible, crawlable copy.
3. Fix one blocker at a time instead of asking the builder for a full redesign.
4. Publish the smallest safe change and verify it outside the editor.
5. Keep a short change log so future prompts do not undo the fix.

How to brief the builder

A good builder prompt names the page, the constraint and the proof boundary. Do not ask for better SEO in the abstract. Ask for the exact output you need: the metadata fields, redirect behavior, accessible labels, image sizes, footer links, form states or copy changes. Include the instruction to keep existing URLs unless a URL itself is the problem.

For founders and operators who launched with an ai builder or no-code tool and need to know whether google can actually see the site., the safest wording is usually: keep the current visual direction, change only the launch-readiness issues, and show the before/after evidence. That prevents the tool from replacing a working layout with a new generic one. It also keeps the conversation focused on the business risk rather than a fresh design pass.

Be especially firm about proof. If a page needs a testimonial, customer result, office address, certification or measured performance claim, supply the real detail yourself. If you do not have it yet, ask the builder to write around the gap honestly. Specificity beats fake confidence. A smaller true claim is stronger than a dramatic claim a buyer cannot verify.

How to verify after publishing

Verification should happen on the published URL, not inside the builder preview. Open the page in a private window, inspect the source or rendered DOM where relevant, and run the same checks again. If the fix was metadata, compare the title, description, canonical and social URL. If it was accessibility, tab through the page and check labels. If it was speed, test mobile and look at the largest visible assets first.

Do not expect every external tool to update instantly. Search Console, snippets and social previews can lag behind the published change. What you can verify immediately is whether the live page now serves the right evidence. Once the page is technically clean, request indexing or resubmit a sitemap only where that makes sense.

Concrete example

This is the kind of page head you want crawlers to see on the production URL, not only after client-side scripts finish.

<title>Acme Bookkeeping for Shopify Sellers | Acme Finance</title>
<meta name="description" content="Bookkeeping support for Shopify sellers who need clean monthly numbers, sales tax context and plain-English reporting.">
<link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/">
<meta property="og:url" content="https://example.com/">

Use examples like this as a pattern, not a claim to copy. Replace every business name, page promise, audience and proof point with your own real details. If you do not have proof yet, say less and be clearer rather than manufacturing confidence.

Builder-specific notes

• In Lovable, v0, and Bolt, check the generated app files as well as the builder preview; the preview can work while production metadata is still weak.
• In Framer, Wix, Durable, Webflow AI, and 10Web, check page-level SEO settings rather than only visible section text.
• If a custom domain was added after the first publish, repeat the canonical and sitemap checks on the final domain.

After each change, test the production URL rather than trusting the editor preview. Preview pages are useful while building; Google, buyers and accessibility tools interact with the published page.

Copy-paste fix prompt

Paste this into your builder or hand it to whoever owns the site. Keep the constraints in place, especially the instruction not to invent proof.

Audit my live website for Google visibility problems in this order: indexability, robots rules, canonical URL, redirects, title tag, meta description, sitemap, crawlable homepage copy, internal links, and trust pages. Do not redesign the site. Return the exact blocker, the exact setting or file to change, and a verification step for Search Console.

Scan it before and after

Run the page through Clunky AI's free scan before the fix and again after publishing. The scan will not replace judgment, but it gives you a repeatable way to check speed, findability, accessibility, trust, action and copy credibility.

Useful next steps inside Clunky AI:

• run a free Clunky AI scan
• findability checks
• compare AI builder pages

Related deep dives:

• Why your Lovable site isn't showing up on Google (and the 20-minute fix)
• The duplicate-URL bug hiding in most AI-built sites (www, http, trailing slashes)

References

• Search Console Help: URL Inspection
• Google: JavaScript SEO basics
• Google: consolidate duplicate URLs