It’s not just you. Google really does ignore some websites. Some it won’t even keep in its index.
(Worth knowing: Google isn’t the whole internet. It’s an index of the pages it has chosen to keep. If you’re not in it, nobody’s finding you through it.)
Google used to be far less fussy. Over the years it has raised its standards, because its whole business depends on giving people the best answer before they wander off somewhere else. Now there’s a second gatekeeper too: AI tools like ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews, which only quote sources they trust.
So what did you do to upset it? The usual suspects:
- You signed up with a “first page guaranteed” or “pay nothing until you rank” agency.
- You (or someone) stuffed your keywords into every corner of the site.
- You hid keywords in text the same colour as the background. You’re not the first.
- You hired an agency that “stumbled across your website” and offered a free keyword analysis.
- My personal favourite: you believed the email saying your “SEO-algorithm is outdated”. I’ve received that one. Watch out for those outdated algorithms.
1. The guarantee
No reputable SEO can guarantee you anything on Google. They don’t control Google. Nobody outside Google knows every factor in how it ranks pages, and the one company that could guarantee a spot would much rather sell you an ad.
If someone guarantees page one, they’re either guessing with your money or planning to rank you for something nobody searches.
It doesn’t work like that.
2. Keyword stuffing
Say I want this site to rank for “awesome red sneakers”. So I write “awesome red sneakers” forty times on the page, cram it into the title, the headings and every image name, and wait for the sales.
Google spotted that trick a long time ago. Now it reads pages more like a person does. Writing for a robot just makes your page worse for both.
It doesn’t work like that.
3. Invisible text
“I’ll write ‘fluffy kitten slippers’ a thousand times in white text on a white background. Genius.”
Googlebot reads the code, not just what’s on screen. Hidden text is one of the oldest tricks around, and one of the easiest ways to get a site quietly buried.
It doesn’t work like that either.
What you can check yourself
You’re busy running a business. You don’t need to become an SEO. But these take ten minutes.
Are you actually in Google?
Type site:yourdomain.com.au into Google. It shows the pages Google has kept from your site. Then search your business name, which should bring you up on page one.
If you’re missing, that’s why nobody finds you. For the full picture, set up Google Search Console (free). It tells you which pages are indexed, which aren’t, and why.
A useful extra: if Google is keeping far more pages than you think your site has, it’s probably indexing junk like tag pages, image attachment pages and old test pages. That dilutes everything else.
Do your pages say what you actually sell?
Pick the words a customer would type to find you. Are they on your site, in plain sentences, in the page title, on a page dedicated to that service? Not stuffed. Just clearly there.
“Welcome to our website” tells Google and the AI tools nothing. “Custom kitchen joinery in Geelong” tells them exactly what to do with you.
Is your Google Business Profile claimed and filled in?
Search for your business on Google Maps. If it isn’t there, or you’ve never claimed it, do it. It’s free, it’s often the first thing a local customer sees, and AI tools lean on it too.
Is your site the source of truth?
Social media profiles help people find and trust you. But never treat a Facebook page as a substitute for your own website. You’re building on someone else’s land. (Remember Myspace?)
Bottom line
Google doesn’t hate your site personally. It either can’t understand it, or someone has tricked it on your behalf. Fix the basics above and you’ll often see it come round. If you’ve done all that and you’re still invisible, that’s when it’s worth getting someone to look under the bonnet.