My site cannot be found on search engines after six weeks

Hi Paul,

I wonder if you could help me too? I launched my SS site early Feb, have connected to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools and verified ownership etc but my site is completely unfindable via all search engines e.g. Google, Bing, Yahoo etc, including when search by 'site: domain')

I have submitted sitemaps to both Google and Bing and have requested indexing on all pages. It has been circa 6 weeks for Google. I've used the URL Inspection tools, Google confirms no pages are indexed and Bing states "Discovered but not crawled - URL cannot appear on Bing" for all webpages. At present, my site can only be found by typing the exact URL into the browser address bar. The site is live, does not have a password, has content is optimised for SEO. There isn't any code restricting crawls or robots. 

The domain is controlled by GoDaddy - https://www.yundies.co.uk

Any ideas appreciated. Both SS and GoDaddy believe its the others issue. After going through all the guides I can find online, I'm at a loss.

Thanks in advance,

Anna

2 hours ago, Alm said:

Hi Paul, I wonder if you could help me too? I launched my SS site early Feb...but my site is completely unfindable via all search engines. The site is live, does not have a password, has content is optimised for SEO. Both SS and GoDaddy believe its the others issue. After going through all the guides I can find online, I'm at a loss.

Hi Anna

I understand how frustrating it can be when your site is live but hasn't been indexed. I'm no SEO expert and I haven't seen your Google report but I can tell you:

• There aren't any technical issues affecting the site.
• There's nothing that Squarespace or GoDaddy can do improve your discoverability.
• I couldn't find any sites that link to your site. "Backlinks" would help to link your site to other relevant content.
• The site content may have been optimised, but the content is "thin". For example, your homepage only contains around 120 words, which may not be enough to convince search engines that the content is worth indexing. As I said, I'm not an SEO expert, but I understand search engines typically want to see more than 300 words on a page to rank it. If it were me, I'd add a lot more text content to the site and then I'd re-submit the updated sitemap. (Here's another post where I commented on thin content.)

I hope this helps.

As an aside (unrelated to discoverability) I recommend that you add the 'opt-out' option to your cookie banner. You'll find more details in this post.

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Thanks Paul - really appreciate your response.

I will action those points now. 

It looks like something is preventing the search engines finding the URLs - this is impacting all pages/URLs in use. The URL indexing tool on Google Search Console doesn't find any URLs, despite a sitemap being submitted.

Bing states that the URL cannot appear on Bing, as per screenshot below. 

There are no manual actions or blocks on either search engine.

Any further advice? 

1 hour ago, Alm said:

It looks like something is preventing the search engines finding the URLs

Nothing should be preventing the search engines from finding your site content. Your sitemap is up to date and correctly references your content but, as I mentioned above, there is very little unique content to index at the moment.

Also, you have some pages with demo content and, as these will contain the same content as thousands of Squarespace sites, this will be considered "duplicate" content, which is another reason not to index the content. For example, you'll want to disable the store-1 page (last edited on Feb 26) as it contains the Squarespace placeholder text of "It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference." 

Let us know how you get on.

Hi Paul,

Thanks for your help. I've worked through your feedback and Google Search Console has updated to show the following issues on the homepage which are preventing indexing and crawling of the other pages -

Duplicate without user-selected canonical

Crawled - currently not indexed

Do you have any further advice on this. I'm working through Google's help pages on this but they're difficult to decipher.

Any previous advice you've given that you could link me to please?

Thank you,

Anna