WordPress not indexing
Somewhere in your settings, a checkbox is telling Google to leave.
WordPress can request its own invisibility from more places than any other platform — a Reading-settings checkbox, an SEO plugin's per-type rules, a theme option, a membership plugin's privacy defaults. When a WordPress site isn't indexing, the hunt is almost always through those switches, and the villain is usually one of them.
Same-day diagnosis. Flat quote before any fix.
What’s actually happening
The infamous one is Settings → Reading → 'Discourage search engines from indexing this site' — a single checkbox that emits sitewide noindex. It's checked deliberately during development and forgotten at launch so routinely that it deserves its reputation. But WordPress's noindex surface is much wider: SEO plugins (Yoast, Rank Math, AIOSEO) carry per-post-type and per-taxonomy index toggles where one wrong setting hides every product or every category page; themes ship their own SEO panels that fight the plugins; and membership or coming-soon plugins wrap the site in privacy that outlasts its purpose.
The layered controls mean the diagnosis is a settings archaeology: what does the rendered page actually say? View source on an unindexed page and search for 'noindex' — the tag's presence confirms self-requested invisibility; then the hunt works backward to which layer emitted it, because removing it at the wrong layer gets overridden by the right one. Full absence of the tag moves the investigation to robots.txt, Search Console's coverage verdicts, and the non-WordPress causes covered by the general indexing page — but on WordPress, check the switches first. It's the five-minute path to the answer more often than not.
The usual causes, ranked
After twenty-seven years of these calls, the odds are well mapped. Start at the top.
The Reading-settings checkbox
Sitewide discouragement, set in development, surviving launch. The single most common WordPress indexing villain, by a wide margin.
SEO-plugin type and taxonomy rules
One toggle set to noindex on posts, products, or categories — a whole content class hidden by configuration.
Plugin pile-up and overrides
Two SEO plugins, or theme SEO plus a plugin, emitting conflicting directives — the strictest one wins, invisibly.
Privacy modes that overstayed
Coming-soon, maintenance, and membership plugins holding noindex or password walls long after they were needed.
What you can safely try first
Nothing below can make things worse — that’s the selection criterion. Anything riskier belongs in professional hands, on a backup.
- 1
Check the famous checkbox
Settings → Reading. If 'Discourage search engines' is on, you've likely just solved it — uncheck, save, and request reindexing. Half these cases end here.
- 2
View source and search for 'noindex'
On the pages that should rank. Present: self-requested invisibility, hunt the emitting layer. Absent: the problem is elsewhere and you've saved hours of settings-digging.
- 3
Audit the SEO plugin's Search Appearance
Per-type and per-taxonomy index settings: posts, pages, products, categories. One 'No' where it shouldn't be explains a category-shaped hole in your visibility.
Stop and call when…
- The tag persists after settings changes — something is overriding, and finding it means reading the layer stack
- Only some content types are hidden and the pattern isn't obvious — per-type archaeology across plugins and theme
- Everything looks right and indexing still doesn't come — time for the full non-WordPress differential
From there it’s our job: same-day look, flat quote, and the $229 flat repair covers most cases of exactly this.
Single Error Fix — buy it now, skip the hunt.
One error, hunted down and fixed — 500s, white screens, redirect loops, broken pages.
Covers one specific error or broken behavior on one site. Diagnosis, the fix, and a plain-English note on what happened. If we can't fix it, you get a full refund.
Questions we hear a lot.
I unchecked the box — how fast will Google index us?
The block lifts immediately; the indexing follows Google's schedule. Accelerate it: verify Search Console, submit the sitemap, and request indexing on your key pages. Expect days-to-weeks for presence, longer for competitive rankings — the checkbox controlled permission, not priority. If nothing appears after several weeks, something else is also wrong, and that's the deeper diagnosis.
How do multiple plugins end up fighting over indexing?
Accretion: the theme shipped SEO options, someone added Yoast, a developer later preferred Rank Math, and now three systems emit directives on every page. Browsers and bots obey the output, and the strictest directive present wins. The repair isn't adding a fourth opinion — it's electing one system, migrating its settings, and retiring the others cleanly.
What does the $229 repair cover?
The complete switch-hunt: Reading settings, every SEO-plugin rule, theme options, privacy plugins, robots.txt, and rendered-page verification that noindex is actually gone from every template. Then Search Console verified, sitemap submitted, reindexing requested on priority pages, and a written map of which system now owns your SEO settings — so the next mystery has one place to look.
Related symptoms & help
Errors travel in packs. If this one visited, check its friends.
Find the checkbox. Flip it. Get found.
Send the symptom, get a same-day look and a flat quote from the developer who's fixed this exact thing more times than either of us can count.