site not indexed/showing up in Google search results

  • Unknown's avatar
    delaineylahood · Member ·

    My website is not showing up when I search my name or website URL on Google. The site has been up since 2020, is set to public and does not have the ‘Do not allow search engines to index my site’ setting selected. I’ve also followed directions listed here (https://wordpress.com/support/site-verification-services/) to connect my site to Google’s Search Console and I receive an error message each time I try. The error message reads:

    Ownership Verification Method Failed
    Verification method: Domain name provider
    Failure reason: We couldn’t find your verification token in your domain’s TXT records. Sometimes DNS changes can take a while to appear. Please wait a few hours, then reopen your property in Search Console. If verification fails again, try adding a different DNS TXT record.’

    When I do a site search on Google for my domain, it generates no results. I believe this may be because my sitemap was not automatically sent to major search engines for indexing as it was supposed to, or another issue of that nature.

    WP.com: Yes
    Correct account: Yes

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to moderators and staff)

  • supernovia · Staff ·

    Hey there, can you confirm which site you need help with?

    This setting will block most search engines, so you’d need to fix that:

    Do not allow search engines to index my site

    But the site you listed hasn’t had that setting recently. It also seems to mostly be copies of articles from other sites, so I’m not sure if that’s the one you’re referring to.

    Please confirm and we’ll go from there!

  • Unknown's avatar
    delaineylahood · Member ·

    This is the site I need help with: https://delaineylahood.wordpress.com

    I already made sure that setting was not checked. The website is a portfolio of articles I’ve written.

    Thanks

  • staff-doublebassd · Staff ·

    Hi there,

    I would recommend using the HTML verification route instead:

    https://wordpress.com/support/site-verification-services/#google-search-console

    With that said, search engines are a lot kinder to sites with original content and is less likely to optimize content copied from other sites. So, unique content will inevitably help your site show up higher on Google.

    Hope this helps.

  • Unknown's avatar
    delaineylahood · Member ·

    Thank you. I have already tried using the HTML verification route several times since the website was created and always receive an error message (detailed in my original post). I don’t believe unique content would help here because when I did a site search of my domain on Google it generated no results. The issue is not that the site is showing up lower on Google, it’s not showing up at all.

  • staff-totoro · Staff ·

    Hi there,

    I see in an earlier reply you mentioned that Google gave you this error message in Search Console:

    Ownership Verification Method Failed
    Verification method: Domain name provider
    Failure reason: We couldn’t find your verification token in your domain’s TXT records. Sometimes DNS changes can take a while to appear. Please wait a few hours, then reopen your property in Search Console. If verification fails again, try adding a different DNS TXT record.’

    To confirm, you are using this URL when adding your sitemap in the Sitemaps section of Google Search Console, yes? https://delaineylahood.wordpress.com/sitemap.xml

    I can confirm that sitemap file is accessible to Google so they should be able to see it without issue.

    Thanks for confirming.

  • staff-totoro · Staff ·

    Hi there,

    I forgot to ask this, but regarding that error message, how much time did you allow to pass before you attempted to verify your site in Google Search Console? It can take up to 72 hours for Google to recognize your domain as verified in some cases, so if you attempt to verify too soon you can get an error message even if you entered the <meta> info here correctly:

    https://wordpress.com/marketing/traffic/delaineylahood.wordpress.com

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