Why isn’t my business showing on Google? Eight checks, in order.

Short answer: first check you’re searching the way a customer would (signed out, from their location). Then check Google has actually indexed your site, nothing is blocking it, your Google Business Profile is verified and not suspended, and that you’re looking at the right kind of search. If all of that is fine, your competitors are simply stronger for that search, and that’s fixable.

1. Are you searching the way a customer would?

Google personalises results by location and by your account. We learnt this first-hand: our own team saw JB Digital Barossa ranking near the top on a laptop signed in to the account that manages the profile, and nowhere near it on a signed-out phone. The signed-out phone was the truth.

Search in a private window, signed out, and remember your location changes the map results a lot. Better still, use Google Search Console, which reports the average position across everyone who saw you.

2. Is your site indexed at all?

Search site:yourdomain.com.au in Google. If nothing comes up, Google hasn’t indexed the site. In Search Console, the URL Inspection tool tells you whether a specific page is indexed and, if not, why.

3. Is it new?

New sites take time to be discovered. Submitting a sitemap in Search Console and requesting indexing for the main pages speeds it up. Barossa 50’s Diner’s site first showed up in Search Console on 13 August 2026 and averaged 1.2 for “tanunda diner” in its first full 28-day window (8 Aug – 4 Sep), so it can be quick when the basics are right. Weeks of nothing usually means something is wrong.

4. Is something blocking Google?

• A noindex tag left on from when the site was being built. Very common after a launch.
• A robots.txt file that disallows the whole site.
• A “hide from search engines” or password setting in Wix, Squarespace or WordPress.
• The site moved to a new domain or to https without redirects from the old addresses.

Search Console’s Pages report lists the reasons pages aren’t indexed. Read it before changing anything else.

5. Is your Google Business Profile verified and live?

If you’re missing from Google Maps specifically, open your Business Profile. Check it’s verified, not suspended, and that there isn’t a duplicate profile for the same business splitting the signals. Suspensions often follow a name with added keywords, an address that doesn’t meet the guidelines, or a big edit made all at once.

6. Are you searching your name, or what you do?

These are different problems. If people can’t find you by your business name, it’s an indexing or profile problem (checks 2 to 5). If they find you by name but not for “electrician mount barker”, that’s a relevance and competition problem, which is what SEO is for.

7. Maps or the regular results?

The map pack and the regular results are ranked differently. The map pack depends heavily on distance from the searcher, so a business ten kilometres away may never appear in the map for someone in your street, but can still rank in the regular results with a strong page about that area. Knowing which one you’re missing from tells you what to work on.

8. Your competitors are just stronger, for now

If everything above is fine, the businesses above you have more relevant pages, more reviews, a better-built profile or more mentions around the web. That’s normal, and it’s fixable. Iron Works Mobile Welding averaged 26.5 for “mobile welding adelaide” in 13 Jun – 10 Jul 2026, page three, and 6.3 in 5 Sep – 2 Oct 2026. Nothing was broken; it just needed the right pages and profile.

What to do next

1. Set up Google Search Console if you haven’t. It’s free and it’s the only source of truth for how you appear.
2. Work through checks 2 to 5 and fix anything broken first.
3. Then pick the three searches that matter most to your business and compare your page and profile with the top three results for each.

If the problem turns out to be the Business Profile, our Google Business Profile optimisation page explains how we fix it.