Can Google find your website? Findability checks
Can Google find and understand the site? 32 checks · 18% of the overall score.
Findability is the plumbing of search. Before Google can rank a page it has to be allowed to fetch it, able to render it, and able to tell what it is about. Most small-business websites lose visibility here without anyone noticing: a theme ships with a stray noindex, a sitemap points at http:// URLs, or every page carries the same title.
These checks read the site the way Googlebot does — robots.txt, the XML sitemap, the HTML of the homepage and a sample of linked pages — and flag anything that would stop a search engine from indexing the site or understanding it.
The 32 checks
| Check | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Googlebot allowed to crawl | A single Disallow: / in robots.txt removes the whole site from Google. |
| Homepage indexable | A noindex meta tag or X-Robots-Tag header keeps the page out of search results entirely. |
| robots.txt present | Missing or malformed robots.txt makes crawl behaviour unpredictable. |
| XML sitemap | Sitemaps tell Google which pages exist and when they changed — essential for sites with weak internal linking. |
| Sitemap declared in robots.txt | The declared sitemap is discovered automatically by every search engine, not just the ones you registered with. |
| Sitemap URLs return 200 (sample) | Sitemaps full of redirects or 404s waste crawl budget and signal neglect. |
| Sitemap URLs use canonical https host | Listing http:// or www-mismatched URLs splits signals between duplicates. |
| Title tag | The title is the strongest on-page ranking signal and the headline in the result. |
| Meta description | Descriptions drive click-through; missing ones get replaced by random page text. |
| Unique titles across pages | Duplicate titles tell Google the pages are interchangeable. |
| Unique meta descriptions | Same as titles — duplicates depress click-through across the site. |
| Single H1 heading | One clear H1 anchors the topic of the page for crawlers and screen readers. |
| H1 on every page | Pages without a heading are harder to classify. |
| H1 differs from title | Using both slots is a free chance to cover a second phrasing. |
| Heading hierarchy | Skipped levels (H1 → H4) confuse outline extraction used by Google and AI models. |
| Canonical tag | Prevents parameter and trailing-slash variants from competing with each other. |
| www / non-www / http all resolve to one address | Four hostnames serving the same content is four-way duplicate content. |
| Redirect chain | Every extra hop slows the page and leaks link equity. |
| Clean URLs | Readable URLs earn more clicks and are quoted more often. |
| Structured data (schema.org) | Schema unlocks rich results and gives AI models machine-readable facts. |
| Page language declared | The lang attribute helps Google serve the page to the right audience. |
| Images have alt text | Alt text is how images get indexed and how blind users get content. |
| Descriptive link text | “Click here” tells Google nothing about the destination. |
| Internal links | Pages nobody links to are pages Google rarely crawls. |
| Broken internal links (sample) | Dead links are a quality signal and a dead end for visitors. |
| Key pages load | Contact, about and services pages must resolve — they are the most-visited after the homepage. |
| Dedicated service / product pages | One page per service is how local businesses rank for each thing they do. |
| Linked pages set to noindex | A site that links to pages it hides from Google is usually misconfigured. |
| CSS/JS not blocked for crawlers | Google renders pages; blocked assets mean it sees a broken layout. |
| Missing pages return a real 404 | Soft 404s (200 status on a “not found” page) pollute the index. |
| Site crawl | A short crawl of internal pages reveals problems the homepage alone hides. |
| Lighthouse SEO | Google's own SEO audit, when PageSpeed data is available. |
Most common fixes
- Remove any noindex from pages you want ranked; check both the meta tag and the HTTP header.
- Generate an XML sitemap, keep it to canonical https URLs, and reference it from robots.txt.
- Write a unique title (under 60 characters) and description (under 155) for every page.
- Pick one canonical host (we recommend the bare domain) and 301 the other three variants to it.
- Add Organization or LocalBusiness schema with name, address, phone, hours and sameAs links.
Questions
Why does my site not show up on Google?
The most common causes, in order: a noindex tag left over from development, robots.txt blocking Googlebot, no sitemap and no inbound links so Google never found it, or the site is very new. The Findability chapter of the Cohelm report checks each of these.
Do I need an XML sitemap for a small site?
It is not strictly required, but it is the cheapest possible win: it tells every search engine which pages exist and when they changed, and it costs nothing. Most platforms generate one automatically.
Is structured data the same as SEO?
It is part of it. Structured data (schema.org JSON-LD) does not directly raise rankings, but it enables rich results and gives Google and AI assistants unambiguous facts about your business.