Why isn't my business showing up on Google?

You’ve paid for a website. You type “electrician Walsall” or “wedding photographer Cannock” into Google, scroll through two pages, and you’re not there. Sometimes you’re not even there when you search your own business name.

It’s a horrible feeling, and it’s very common. The good news is that the cause is usually one of a small number of things, and you can check most of them yourself before paying anyone anything.

First, though, it’s worth being clear which problem you’ve actually got, because there are two, and they have different fixes.

Two different problems

You don’t show up when people search your business name. This is almost always technical. Google either doesn’t know your site exists or has been told not to list it. It’s usually quick to fix.

You show up for your name, but not for what you do. This is the normal state of affairs for a new or small business, and it’s a competition problem rather than a fault. Fixing it takes longer and involves more than the website.

Start with the first, because there’s no point working on the second until it’s sorted.

Check whether Google has your site at all

Go to Google and search for site:yourdomain.co.uk (with your real domain, no spaces). That asks Google to list every page it has from your site.

If nothing comes back, Google hasn’t indexed you. The usual reasons are:

It’s new. A brand new site can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks to appear. If yours went live last Tuesday, give it time, but do the next step anyway so you’re not just waiting.

It’s been told to stay hidden. Sites under construction are often set to ask search engines not to list them, and sometimes nobody switches that off at launch. On WordPress it’s a tickbox under Settings, then Reading, labelled “Discourage search engines from indexing this site”. If it’s ticked on a live business site, that’s your problem, and you can fix it in about four seconds. I build demo sites for prospective clients that are hidden from Google on purpose (there’s a write-up of how that works here), and the whole point of making that the careful default is that the same switch, left on by accident, quietly makes a real business invisible.

Nobody’s told Google it’s there. Set up Google Search Console. It’s free, and it’s the closest thing you’ll get to Google telling you directly what it thinks of your site. Verify your domain, submit your sitemap (usually at yourdomain.co.uk/sitemap.xml), and use the URL inspection tool on your homepage. If Google has a problem with the page, it’ll tell you what it is there, in reasonably plain English.

If the site: search does show your pages but you still can’t find yourself by name, check your page titles. The title is the blue link text in search results, and it should say who you are and what you do. A homepage titled “Home” isn’t doing you any favours.

Local results are mostly not your website

This is the bit that surprises people. When someone searches for a service plus a town, the first thing they usually see is a map with three businesses under it. Those listings come from Google Business Profile, not from your website. You can have a lovely site and still be missing from that map entirely.

If you haven’t claimed your Business Profile, do that first. It’s free. Google will make you verify that you’re really the business, and the method varies, so just follow what it asks for.

Once it’s live, the things that make the most difference are:

• The primary category. Pick the one that most exactly describes what you do. “Electrician” rather than “Contractor”. This matters more than most people realise.
• The service area or address. If you go to customers rather than them coming to you, set it up as a service-area business and you can hide your home address.
• Reviews. Ask happy customers for one. Most people are glad to if you send them the link while the job’s still fresh in their mind. Reply to the reviews you get, good and bad, because people read the replies.
• Being complete. Opening hours, photos of real work, a description that says what you do and where. Nothing clever, just filled in properly.

Make your details match everywhere

Your business name, address and phone number should be written exactly the same on your website, your Business Profile, Facebook, and any directories you’re listed in, like Yell, Checkatrade or trade association sites. If one says “Unit 3” and another says “3 Park Road” and a third has an old mobile number, that inconsistency doesn’t help Google trust any of them.

It’s a dull job. Do it once, properly, and keep a note of everywhere you’re listed.

What the website does need to do

Your site does still matter, especially for searches that don’t trigger the map. The basics:

Say what you do and where you do it, in plain words. If you’re a plumber covering Walsall and Cannock, those words should appear naturally on the page, in the title and in the headings. Google isn’t going to guess.

Have a page for each main service. One page that lists “boilers, bathrooms, leaks, general plumbing” is weaker than a page for each of the things you most want to be found for.

Don’t make a page for every town with the name swapped. “Plumber Walsall”, “Plumber Cannock”, “Plumber Lichfield” as near-identical pages is an old trick, Google treats it as spam now, and it reads terribly to real people. If you genuinely have something different to say about an area, like a project you did there, that’s different.

Work properly on a phone and load quickly. Most local searches happen on a phone, often on patchy signal. A site that takes eight seconds to appear loses people before Google’s opinion even comes into it.

Be realistic about competition

If you’re a new accountant in central Birmingham, you’re up against firms that have had websites, reviews and links pointing at them for fifteen years. You won’t overtake them in a month, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.

That’s not a reason to give up. It’s a reason to aim for the searches you can realistically win first: the more specific service, the smaller town nearby, your name plus what you do. Those bring in real enquiries while the bigger ones build slowly.

Things not to do

• Don’t pay anyone who guarantees page one. Nobody can guarantee that, because nobody controls Google.
• Don’t buy reviews or write your own. It’s against Google’s rules, profiles get suspended for it, and fake reviews are now specifically illegal in the UK under consumer protection law.
• Don’t use a fake address to look local somewhere you’re not. That’s another quick route to a suspended profile.

If you’ve checked all this and you’re still stuck

Most of the above you can do yourself, and I’d encourage you to try. If you’d rather someone else looked, a single SEO fix is the kind of thing my quick fix from £99 covers, and there’s a fuller SEO setup available as an add-on if you want it done properly from the start. Either way, get in touch and tell me what you’ve already tried.