Your site can be built exactly right — and still be invisible on Google

Everything we normally check was already correct

The sitemap was in place and responded as it should. robots.txt pointed to it. Every page had a canonical address, that is, a statement to Google about which address is the original. The Swedish and English versions pointed to each other with hreflang. No page was accidentally hidden with noindex.

In other words: nothing wrong in the code, nothing to fix.

Google still knew of only two addresses

When we opened Google Search Console it said zero submitted sitemaps. Google had found two addresses on the entire site — one indexed and one redirect. The site has more pages than that, and they had been live for weeks.

Verifying is not the same as submitting

This is the trap, and it is an easy one to fall into. In Search Console you do two entirely different things that both feel like being done:

• Verify — you prove to Google that the site is yours. That gives you access to the reports.
• Submit the sitemap — you hand Google the list of pages you want it to fetch.

Verification is the first thing you do. It is confirmed with a green tick, and after that the console looks as though it is running — there are reports, there are menus, it looks under way. But nothing has been submitted. The sitemap is still sitting on the site, waiting for someone to point at it.

What happened when we did it

We submitted the sitemap. The status became Success, and the number of discovered pages went from two to six — immediately, in the same view. (If you count the addresses in our sitemap today you will find more than six — this piece and the page it sits on account for four of them.)

Not a line of code changed. The site was exactly as well built before as after.

Discovered is not indexed

One more thing, because this is the next place you get misled: a page being discovered means Google knows it exists. It does not mean it appears in search results. So follow up in the Pages report, not in the sitemap view. Pages is where it says whether a page is actually indexed or not — and what is keeping it out.

Do this — it takes a few minutes

• Open Google Search Console and verify your domain if you have not already.
• Go to Sitemaps in the menu. If it says zero submitted — this is your problem.
• Type sitemap.xml in the field and click Submit. If you are not sure you have one: try the address yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml in your browser.
• Come back in a few days and read Pages — not the number discovered, but how many are actually indexed.

Why this deserves a piece of its own

Because the fault is nowhere to be seen in the site. You can review the code as carefully as you like and never find it, for the simple reason that it is not in the code. It is in the fact that nobody has told Google the site exists.

A technical check answers the question is it built correctly? It never answers the question does Google know about it? Those are two different questions, and only one of them has anything to do with the code.

We found this on our own site. That is why we are writing about it.