Not indexed or not ranking: two different problems
A website that does not show up on Google has one of two problems. Either Google has not indexed its pages, or it has indexed them and they do not rank for the searches you tried.
The fixes have nothing in common, so find out which one you have first. Google's URL Inspection answers it page by page, with Google's own reason for every page it left out.
What you need: the site in Search Console
URL Inspection only answers for a site you have verified in Google Search Console. If you have not added the site yet, do that first. It is free, and its URL Inspection is where Google says why a page is not indexed.
Then connect the hosted MCP server and sign in with the same Google account, or run npm i -g seo then seo start. SEO Skill is free for this.
Get Google's reason for every page on your site
Ask your agent:
Why is example.com not showing up on Google? Check which pages are indexed and which need fixing.Or run it in a terminal:
seo index --site example.comIt finds the pages it knows from your Search Console and your sitemap, asks URL Inspection about each one and loads each page live. Each run checks 100, starting with the pages that lost clicks and the pages that get the most. On your own machine, --max-urls goes up to the 2,000 checks Google allows each property a day.
The result groups pages by Google's reason and labels each one fix, check, expected or indexed. The labels come from simple rules over the evidence, not from Google. It also says how many pages it checked out of how many it knows, so a short run is never an all-clear.
The indexing reasons you are most likely to see
| Google's reason | What to check |
|---|---|
| URL is unknown to Google | Google has no record of the URL. Check that a submitted sitemap lists it and that your own pages link to it. |
| Discovered, currently not indexed | Google has the URL and has not crawled it. See discovered, currently not indexed. |
| Crawled, currently not indexed | Google crawled it and left it out. See crawled, currently not indexed. |
| Excluded by noindex tag | The page asks not to be indexed. Fine if you meant it. If the page has since dropped the tag, it is labelled check. |
| Blocked by robots.txt | Your robots.txt stops Google fetching it. Check the rule is one you meant. |
| Page with redirect | Usually expected for old URLs. A temporary redirect, or a redirect your sitemap still lists, is labelled fix. |
| Not found (404) | Labelled fix when your sitemap or your own pages still point to it. |
| Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user | Google indexed another URL in this page's place. The result shows both. |
Google's Page indexing report help defines every reason. SEO Skill shows the reason word for word, so you can look it up there.
A new site that Google does not know yet
When most pages come back as URL is unknown to Google, Google has not found the site yet. Submit your sitemap in Search Console and use Request indexing in the URL Inspection tool for your most important pages. seo cannot submit URLs to Google itself, but for one page it tells you what to do next:
seo page --url https://example.com/pricingFor a page Google does not know, the result says whether your sitemap lists it and points to seo internal-links, which finds the pages on your site that could link to it.
Four new seoskill.dev pages took 4 days to show as indexed
We published four feature pages on this site on 3 November 2026. Our daily index checks showed each one as URL is unknown to Google until 7 November 2026, when all four came back as indexed.
That is one site and four pages, so it proves no rule. It does suggest watching a page that is a few days old and unknown to Google for a week before you change anything.
When every page is indexed and the site still does not show up
If seo index finds your pages indexed, the problem is ranking. Your Search Console already shows which searches your pages appear for and at what position. Ask your agent for them:
Which searches does example.com show up for on Google, and at what position?The SEO report lists the queries just outside the top positions and the pages that rank but get few clicks.
Check a site you do not own
URL Inspection only covers your own properties. For any other URL, such as a client's page or a page linking to you, a live index check searches Google for site: plus the URL and an exact phrase from the page, on desktop and mobile. It needs a DataForSEO key and costs about 2 to 4 cents a page:
seo research index_check --target https://example.org/blog/launchThat is Google search, not Search Console. A page can be indexed and still not show for a site: search, so not found is evidence, not proof.
Hear about it when a page drops out of Google
The weekly site audit ($50 a month per site) checks Google's index every day on our servers, using each property's full 2,000 checks. Your top pages are checked daily, and you get an email when a page drops out of the index or comes back, grouped by Google's reason. Alerts covers each email.