My site disappeared from Google: check these in order

Updated 22 October 2026

First find out whether every page is gone or only some, and whether pages left the index or just rank lower. When a whole site drops out of the index, the cause is usually technical and visible in a few minutes: a noindex, a robots.txt block, server errors or a removal request. Lower rankings after an update are a different problem and take longer to fix.

Step 0: gone, or ranking lower?

• Search site:yourdomain.com in Google. If nothing comes back, the site has left the index. If pages come back, they are still indexed. Don't read the number of results as a page count: Google's docs say the site: operator doesn't necessarily return every indexed URL.
• Open the Performance report in Search Console and compare the last 28 days with the period before. Impressions near zero mean Google stopped showing the site. Impressions steady but clicks down, or average position down, means it is still indexed and ranks lower.
• Look at the Pages table in that report. Google's traffic-drop guide asks the same question: is the drop site-wide, in one group of pages (a folder, a template), or on a few key pages? A drop in one folder points to a template or a rule that matches that path.

Step 1: does the home page load?

Run your home page and one affected page through the checker above. You want a 200 at the end of at most one redirect. A redirect to a login page, an error page or a different domain is the problem on its own. The redirect checker shows every hop.

Step 2: noindex in the HTML or in a header

A robots meta tag or an X-Robots-Tag header with noindex on every page takes the whole site out of the index as Google recrawls it. Google's traffic-drop guide names a misplaced noindex as a cause of a slower, gradual drop. Usual sources: WordPress's 'Discourage search engines' setting, an SEO plugin setting, or a staging server config that went live. The header doesn't show in the page source: use the X-Robots-Tag checker. Search Console lists affected URLs under Excluded by 'noindex' tag.

Step 3: robots.txt

A Disallow: / for User-agent: * or for Googlebot stops crawling. Pages already indexed can stay listed without a snippet for a while; new and changed pages stop appearing. Test the live file with the robots.txt tester, and see Blocked by robots.txt for the fix.

Step 4: server errors or a firewall blocking Googlebot

Google's documentation on HTTP errors says 5xx and 429 responses slow crawling, and URLs that keep returning a server error are removed from the index. Indexed URLs that return a 4xx other than 429 are removed. Open Settings > Crawl stats in Search Console and look at the responses by status code for the days before the drop. A CDN or firewall rule that challenges bots can send 403 to Googlebot while the site works fine in your browser. Our bot page explains how firewall bot rules affect crawlers like ours.

Step 5: canonical pointing somewhere else

If every page declares a canonical on another domain, or all point to the home page, Google may index those URLs instead of yours. This happens after a site copy, a migration or a theme that hardcodes the canonical. Check a few pages with the canonical checker. In Search Console the pages show as duplicate, Google chose a different canonical or as alternate pages.

Step 6: a removal request

Open Indexing > Removals in Search Console and read the request history. Anyone with owner access to the property, such as a former agency or developer, can hide a URL prefix or the whole site from results. Per Google's help page, a successful request lasts about six months and doesn't stop Google from crawling. If you find one you didn't mean, open its menu in the history table and choose Cancel request.

Step 7: manual actions and security issues

Open Security & Manual Actions in Search Console. The Manual Actions report says whether a reviewer at Google applied an action and what it covers. The Security Issues report lists hacked content or malware. Google's traffic-drop guide lists both as causes of drops. Each report says what to fix and how to request a review.

Step 8: a recent site move

If you changed domain, moved to https or restructured URLs, a drop is expected while Google processes the redirects. Google's guide says a medium-sized site can take a few weeks and larger sites longer. Check that old URLs 301 to the matching new URL, not all to the home page, and that the new URLs return 200 without noindex.

Step 9: none of the above

If the site is indexed and every check above is clean, the drop is in rankings, not indexing. Google's guide lists algorithm updates, after which there might not be anything fundamentally wrong with your content, and seasonal changes in demand. Compare the dates of the drop with Google's announced updates, compare year over year in the Performance report, and check Google Trends to see whether searches for your topic fell across the industry. Google's guide says some changes take effect in a few days and others take months, so wait a few weeks before reading the results in Search Console again.

After you fix it

• Run URL Inspection on the home page and your key pages, click Test live URL, then Request indexing.
• In the Page indexing report, open the reason you fixed and click Validate fix.
• Don't add robots.txt blocks, change canonicals or move URLs while you wait. More changes make the recovery harder to read.

Sources: Google Search Central documentation on debugging drops in Google Search traffic, the site: search operator, HTTP status codes and network errors, and Search Console help on the Removals tool. Related: What Search Console alerts on and what it misses · Page with redirect.