Why is my Squarespace site not showing on Google? 6 checks

Why is my Squarespace site not showing on Google?

When a Squarespace site is not showing on Google, most of the time a setting is holding it back, not a ranking problem. Squarespace’s help center lists the same causes we check first: the plan, a password, a hidden page, stray noindex code and the domain. Run the six checks below in order. Each one takes a few minutes, and none of them costs anything.

If all six pass and the site is still missing after a few weeks, then it is time to talk about content and SEO work.

Check 1: is the site on a paid plan and public?

Squarespace says it plainly: “Search engines won’t find trial, expired, or canceled sites.” So the first question is whether the site is on a paid plan and published.

Then open the Site Availability panel. Squarespace’s “Is my site live?” article says the site is live when that panel is set to Public. Trial sites start private, visible only to the owner and contributors.

Check 2: is a password in the way?

A site wide password or a password on the home page keeps Google out, because Google cannot type it in.

The quick test from Squarespace’s own guide: open the site in a private browser window. If you are asked for a password, so is Google. Single pages can carry their own password too, under Page settings, General tab.

Check 3: is the page hidden from search?

Every page has an SEO tab in its settings with a box called Hide this page from search results. Squarespace says to make sure it is unchecked. Check the box on the blog page itself as well as on single pages.

Two more places hide pages without saying so:

• Code injection. Squarespace tells you to remove any noindex code from the site wide and home page code injection, and from the Advanced tab of each page.
• Paywalls. Blog, course or video pages behind a paywall are not indexed.

Check 4: is your own domain the primary one?

If the built in sitename.squarespace.com address is still primary, that is the address search engines are given. Squarespace’s fix is to set your custom domain as primary, and “it updates in your site map”.

If Google still lists the squarespace.com address afterward, the site was most likely indexed before the change. Ask Google to index it again from Search Console.

Check 5: does Google have your sitemap?

Squarespace builds the sitemap for you. It lives at yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml, and changes usually show in it within an hour, up to 24 hours. Pages hidden from search and password pages are left out of it on purpose.

To hand it to Google:

1. Connect Search Console from the Analytics panel, Search keywords, then Connect. Squarespace says to wait 72 hours for the data.
2. In Search Console, open Sitemaps, type the sitemap address under “Add a new sitemap” and click Submit.
3. If it says “Couldn’t fetch”, Squarespace notes that can last 24 to 48 hours while Google processes it.

Once it is in, the Sitemaps report shows a status and a Last read date for each sitemap. Read the dates. A sitemap Google last read months ago tells you Google has not seen your newest pages through it.

Check 6: what does a site: search show, and have you waited long enough?

Search Google for site:yourdomain.com with no other words. Google’s guide uses this search to see whether your pages are indexed. Zero results means keep going down this list. Google warns that the operator “doesn’t necessarily return all the URLs that are indexed”, so use it as a yes or no, not a page count.

Then the hard part: time. Google’s guide says “It can take a few weeks for Google to notice a new site”. Its recrawl page says crawling “can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks”, and that asking for the same URL again “won’t get it crawled any faster”.

What should you do if all six checks pass?

Write down the date you submitted the sitemap and leave it alone for two weeks. Changing settings every day makes it harder to tell what worked.

After that, the Page indexing report (Indexing, Pages) in Search Console tells you which addresses Google has seen and why any were left out. That report, not a guess, decides the next step.

If you would rather hand it over, we design Squarespace sites and fix live ones, and these six are the checks we run first. See our Squarespace design service, or send us your address and we will tell you which of the six it is.