Publish first

Search engines only ever see your published site at its own address. Pages, text and metadata you change in the builder stay invisible to Google until you publish. If your site has never been published, nothing below will make a difference until it is.

Your sitemap

A sitemap is a file listing every page on your site, so a search engine can find them all without following links from page to page. Your site builds one for you.

  1. In the left-hand menu open Settings.
  2. In the Site Details section, find Default Sitemap. The link shown is your sitemap address — it ends in /sitemap.xml.

The sitemap is rebuilt every time you publish and lists your published pages, plus your product and category pages if you have an online store. There is nothing to configure and nothing to switch on.

If you would rather supply your own, upload a file named sitemap.xml under Settings > Special Features > Site Static Files. While that file is there it replaces the automatic sitemap, and the Default Sitemap link disappears; delete the file and the automatic sitemap comes back. The same section is where a robots.txt file goes, if you need one.

Tell Google your site exists

Google finds most sites on its own eventually. Submitting your sitemap is faster, and it lets you see what Google makes of your pages.

  1. Go to Google Search Console and add your domain as a property.
  2. Choose the HTML tag verification method and copy the meta tag it gives you.
  3. In your website administration open Settings > Special Features and click Edit Site Code.
  4. Paste the tag into the Header HTML area and click Update. Then click Save at the top of the panel — both steps are needed, and the change is lost if you only click Update.
  5. Publish your site, then go back to Search Console and finish verifying.
  6. Once verified, open Sitemaps there and submit your sitemap address.

Bing Webmaster Tools works the same way, and can import your property and sitemap from Search Console once you are verified with Google.

Check your site protocol

Under Settings > Special Features, Site Protocol decides whether your addresses are written as https:// or http://, including the addresses inside your sitemap and the address shown in search results. Choose Prefer HTTPS if your domain has an SSL certificate and Prefer HTTP if it does not. A mismatch points search engines at addresses that do not work the way you expect.

If your site still does not appear

  • Give it time. A new site commonly takes several weeks to show up. Submitting a sitemap asks for a visit; it does not schedule one.
  • Confirm it is published and that your domain opens the site in a browser, both with and without www.
  • Check for a site password. If you have set one under Settings > Site Access Control, search engines cannot read any of your pages.
  • Search for your own domain. Type site:yourdomain.com into Google to list what it has indexed so far. No results means it has not crawled you yet, not that something is broken.
  • Use the real address. Only your published domain is indexed — the preview and editing addresses are not, and never will be.

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