Webflow site not showing up on Google: what to check, in order

To find out why a Webflow site is not showing up on Google, first confirm that it is missing: search Google for site: followed by your domain. If your pages come back, the site is listed, and what you are seeing is a question of ranking. If nothing comes back, either the site is new and Google has not reached it yet, or something is keeping Google out. On Webflow that is one of a short list: the site was published only to its webflow.io address, a robots.txt rule blocks crawlers, a page has indexing switched off, the canonical setting points at another address, or a password stands in front of the pages.

This page is about being listed at all. Where a listed page ranks for a phrase is a different subject, and nothing here promises anything about it.

One rule runs through every check. A setting changed in Webflow does nothing until the site is published. Webflow's help repeats it under almost every setting below.

For a quick first look from outside, the page indexing check asks for one address and shows the status it answers with, any rule in robots.txt against it, a noindex on the page or in its headers, and the address it names as its own. It reads any site, whatever it is built on.

What you see and where to go

1. Is the site really missing?

Google's help page on missing pages starts here, because a page that sits far down the results is easily taken for one that is not there at all. Listed and ranking are two different things. A site that is listed can still be on the tenth page for the phrase you typed.

Type the line below into Google Search, with your own domain and nothing else. Google's help says to turn off SafeSearch first, which can filter results.

site:example.com

If pages of yours come back, the site is listed, and this page is not about your problem. To check one page, put its full address after site:. Google says the operator does not necessarily return every address it has indexed, so use it to answer "is anything listed", not to count.

If the site is verified in Google Search Console, the URL Inspection tool gives a fuller answer for one address. "URL is on Google" means the address is eligible to appear in results, which Google says is not a guarantee that it does. "URL is not on Google" means it cannot appear, and the reason is in the fields below: "Crawl allowed?" is about robots.txt, "Page fetch" is about whether the server answered, and "Indexing allowed?" is about noindex. If the tool says the address is unknown to Google, Google has not seen it yet. Check 10 covers verifying a Webflow site.

2. Is the site new?

If the site went live recently, waiting may be all that is left to do. Google's help says that crawling and then indexing a new page typically takes from a day or two to a few weeks in total, depending on many factors. It also says to allow at least a week after you submit a sitemap or ask for indexing before assuming a problem.

What you can do in that time is short:

• Ask once. In the URL Inspection tool, select "Request indexing" for the home page. Google's documentation says that asking again for the same address does not get it crawled any faster, and that a request does not guarantee the page will be included.
• Give Google the sitemap. Check 7 shows whether the site has one.
• Get a link from a site Google already knows. Google says it discovers new sites from existing ones.

Then run checks 3 to 9 anyway. A new site that was never published to its domain looks exactly like a new site that is waiting, and only one of them will ever be listed.

3. Is the site published to your own domain?

A Webflow site can be published to two kinds of address. Webflow's help names them: the Webflow staging subdomain, such as yoursite.webflow.io, and a custom domain, such as yourdomain.com. The Publish menu lists both with a box beside each, and the site goes only to the ones that are checked. So a site can be finished, published and visible at webflow.io while your own domain shows nothing of it.

How to see it. Open your own domain in a private browser window. Then, in Webflow, click "Publish" and look at which domains are listed and which are checked. Connected domains are under Site settings, Publishing, Production.

What to do.

• If your domain is not in the list, it has not been connected. Webflow's help says a site starts on the free Starter Site plan, which publishes to the .webflow.io subdomain, and that hosting a site on a custom domain needs a paid Site plan. It also says you must verify ownership of the domain before you can publish to it.
• If your domain is listed and not checked, check it and publish.
• If more than one domain is connected, set one as the default. Webflow redirects the others to it, which its help says avoids duplicate content. Under Site settings, Publishing, Production, click "Make default" beside the domain, then publish.

A site that lives only at a webflow.io address can be listed by Google at that address. It will not be listed under a domain it was never published to.

4. Is "Staging indexing" switched off?

Webflow has a setting for the webflow.io address alone. Under Site settings, SEO, Indexing, it is named "Staging indexing". Set to off, Webflow's help says, it publishes a robots.txt on the subdomain only, one that tells search engines to ignore that domain.

What that means depends on where your site lives.

• Your site is on your own domain. Off keeps the webflow.io copy out of search, and the file it publishes is on the subdomain only. It is not what is keeping your own domain out.
• Your site lives only at webflow.io. With the setting off, the one address your site has is asking every search engine to stay away. Switch it on, click "Save" and publish.

To see it from outside, open /robots.txt at your webflow.io address in a browser. Webflow's help says that switching this setting off needs a Site plan or a paid Workspace.

5. Is robots.txt blocking the site?

robots.txt tells crawlers which addresses they may request. On Webflow you do not upload the file. You write its rules under Site settings, SEO, Indexing, and Webflow serves them at /robots.txt on your domain. Open that address in a browser to read what crawlers are told.

A rule that blocks the whole site looks like this. It is the first example in Webflow's own help. A site that was kept out of search with this rule before launch stays blocked until someone takes the rule out.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Disallow: / under User-agent: * blocks every crawler from every page. The same rule under User-agent: Googlebot blocks Google alone. A Disallow line with a longer path, such as Disallow: /blog/, blocks only that folder.

There is a second place to look on the same screen. The "Traffic control" toggles write rules for a whole group of crawlers at once, and one of the groups is search engine crawlers. Webflow says that traffic from them is allowed by default, and that with the toggle off it asks those bots not to crawl or index the site.

What to do. Webflow's help says a robots.txt cannot be completely removed once it has been created, only replaced. Put this in the field, which allows everything, then click "Save" and publish:

User-agent: *
Disallow:

To test a rule, paste what /robots.txt shows into the robots.txt tester, give it an address and choose a crawler. It says whether the address is allowed and which line decides.

Two things are worth knowing. Webflow adds a line naming your sitemap to robots.txt by itself, so a Sitemap: line there is not a problem. And Google's documentation says robots.txt is not a way to keep a page out of its results: a blocked address can still be listed, without its content, if other sites link to it. To keep a page out, use check 6. To let it in, the block has to go.

6. Is a page, or a whole Collection, left out?

Webflow can take one page out of search while the rest of the site stays in. There are several places this is set.

• A static page. Open the Pages panel, then the page's settings, then SEO settings. The toggle is named "Sitemap indexing". Off, Webflow's help says, it adds <meta content="noindex" name="robots"> to the page and takes the page out of the sitemap.
• One item in a CMS Collection. Open the item, go to "Item details" and find the "Sitemap Indexing" toggle. Disabled, the item carries a noindex tag and is left out of the sitemap. Webflow says this toggle is on paid Site plans only.
• Every item in a Collection. Webflow's help describes no indexing toggle for a whole Collection template. What it describes there is "Publish settings": with that toggle off, the Collection's pages are not published with the site at all. It also describes custom code on the template, which applies to every page of the Collection.
• Custom code. A noindex tag typed into "Head code" under Site settings, Custom code, is on every page of the site. One typed into a page's own custom code, or a Collection template's, is on that page or that Collection.
• A draft. A page saved as a draft is not published when the site is.

How to see it. Open the missing page, view its source in your browser and search for noindex. The page indexing check does the same for you. In Search Console, "Indexing allowed?" in the URL Inspection tool reports it, and the Page indexing report lists such pages under "URL marked 'noindex'".

What to do. Switch the toggle on, or remove the tag, and publish. Google has to crawl the page again before anything changes. You can ask for that with "Request indexing".

7. Is there a sitemap, and has Google been given it?

A sitemap is the list of addresses you want crawled. Webflow writes one for you when a setting is on: Site settings, the SEO tab, the Sitemap section, "Auto-generate sitemap" set to "Yes". Click "Save changes" and publish. The file is then at /sitemap.xml on your domain, and Webflow updates it each time you publish.

Open /sitemap.xml in a browser, or give your domain to the sitemap checker, which finds the file and reads it. Three things can be wrong:

• There is none. The setting is "No" and nothing was pasted in.
• It was pasted in by hand. With the setting on "No", Webflow serves whatever is in the "Custom sitemap.xml" field. That text holds what the site had on the day it was pasted.
• It lists pages you blocked another way. Webflow says a page blocked in robots.txt, or given a noindex through custom code, stays in the generated sitemap. The "Sitemap indexing" toggle is what takes a published page out.

Give it to Google. In Search Console, open Sitemaps, type sitemap.xml into the field and click "Submit". Google says you need owner permission on the property to submit one there, and that the report shows "Success" when the file was fetched and read. Google also finds a sitemap named in robots.txt, and Webflow puts yours there.

A sitemap tells Google the pages exist. It does not put them in the results.

8. Does the canonical setting point at the wrong address?

A canonical tag is a line in a page that says which address the page should be listed under. Webflow sets it in two places.

• For the whole site. Site settings, SEO, "Global canonical tag URL". Webflow combines what is typed there with each page's slug to make the tag for every page.
• For one static page. In the page's SEO settings, "Page canonical URL". It overrides the site's setting for that page.

If the site's field holds the webflow.io address, or a domain you used to have, every page on the site is telling Google that its real home is somewhere else. Webflow's help gives the rules for the field: it should match the site's default domain, it must include the protocol (https://), it must include www if the default domain does, and it must not end in a slash. With a slash at the end, Webflow says, the canonical address of every page under the home page gets a double slash.

How to see it. View the source of a page and search for rel="canonical", or give the address to the page indexing check, which shows the address a page names as its own. In the URL Inspection tool, "User-declared canonical" is what your page says, and "Google-selected canonical" is the address Google chose. In the Page indexing report, a page that points elsewhere is listed under "Alternate page with proper canonical tag".

What to do. Correct the field, save and publish. If a canonical tag is also added by another tool, such as a tag manager, Webflow says not to set the global one as well: two tags on a page are something search engines may ignore entirely. Google treats a canonical tag as your preference and not as an order. Its help says there is no guarantee it will choose the address you declared.

9. Is a password in front of the pages?

Webflow can put a password on the whole site, a folder, a page, or a Collection template, which then covers every page of that Collection. Google's documentation is plain about the result: a page that is made private, such as one that requires a log-in, is not crawled.

How to see it. Open the address in a private browser window. If Webflow's password page comes up, that is what Google gets too.

What to do.

• For the whole site, go to Site settings, the General tab, "Website password", and switch password protection off. Webflow says a site password applies on all of the site's domains.
• For a page, a folder or a Collection template, open its settings from the Pages panel, go to Access control, set "Restrict access" to "Public" and save.

Then publish.

10. Is the site verified in Search Console?

Verifying a site does not put it in Google. It gives you the one place where Google says what it has done with your pages, which is what checks 1 and 6 to 8 lean on. Webflow has a field for it.

Google says the HTML tag method works for a URL-prefix property and not for a Domain property, which needs a DNS record added at your domain provider. It also says Search Console checks from time to time that the tag is still there. Webflow's help adds a warning for a site that was verified before it moved to Webflow: put the existing ID into the field, or Google may stop finding it.

For Bing, the shortest way is its own import. Bing Webmaster Tools can bring a verified site across from Google Search Console, with its sitemaps, and marks it verified.

11. None of the above: what Google chooses to list

If the site is published to its own domain, is open in robots.txt, carries no noindex, names its own address as canonical and stands behind no password, then Google can reach the pages. What is left is Google's decision, and Google is plain that it makes no promise: its documentation says it does not guarantee to crawl, index or serve a page even when the page meets every requirement.

Two statuses in Search Console's Page indexing report describe pages in that position.

"Crawled - currently not indexed". Google's help says only that the page was crawled and not indexed, that it may or may not be indexed in the future, and that there is no need to resubmit the address.

"Discovered - currently not indexed". Google knows the address and has not crawled it. Its help explains the usual case: "Google wanted to crawl the URL but this was expected to overload the site", so the crawl was put off.

What a site owner can do:

• Make the pages easy to reach. Google's help asks that every page can be reached by following links from the home page. Webflow's help says a static page links to a Collection's pages through a Collection list. If no page has one, check that something on the site links to those pages.
• Keep the sitemap right. Check 7.
• Wait, and ask once. Asking again for the same address does not move it up the queue, and Google says it accepts no payment to crawl a site more often.

When to get help

• Ask Webflow's support when a setting is saved and published and the live site still shows the old thing. Webflow's help says to contact them if old robots.txt rules stay on the published site after you replaced them.
• Hand it over when a check above points at a cause and you would rather not change the setting yourself, or when every check passes and you want the whole site looked at. A Webflow SEO audit from WP Ministry is a one-time written audit in which each finding names the documentation it rests on, with the fixes done and tested again. It starts with a free diagnosis.

What can be fixed is a site that keeps Google out. Whether Google then lists a page, and where, stays Google's decision.