Why is My Shopify Store not Showing up on Google?
Days, weeks, or even months pass, and to find out that your Shopify store is not showing up in Google can be demoralizing.
In fact, many new budding e-commerce entrepreneurs give up after a few months of not gaining any traction from the almighty big G.
Don’t let this be you! Search engines like to analyze and measure before giving you a golden spot on the SERPs.
On the other hand, you may have made a few mistakes - we’ll go through the top 5 reasons why your Shopify store is not showing up on Google and how to fix them. Before that, let’s get some of the most common questions answered.
1, How Long Does it Take to Rank My Shopify Store?
You've probably Googled this a few times, and like many others have stated, "It depends". Too many variables are at play to accurately allude to a timeframe, but nonetheless, many statistics have reported, and in our experience, have concluded that it takes around 3-6 months.
Like you, and most new Shopify stores you probably have a new domain, and new domains tend to go into the mythical "Google Sandbox". The Google sandbox is like a quarantine to determine if your site is sick, or for better words, not spam or malicious.
So, expect to wait 3-6 months before you see any sort of needle movement!
However, you can slightly speed up the process, by creating more content and going after those elusive backlinks.
Whilst you may not be in a position to guest post, or even request backlinks from high authority sites, you can, however, do what we call “initial link juice”. This is the process of getting easy backlinks by creating profiles and accounts that link back to your store. It’s completely a white hat tactic, as long as you follow one simple rule! Provide value, and engage.
2, How do I check My Shopify Store Ranking?
For clarity you’re not checking your store ranking, you’re checking the keyword ranking per page. Although, you can measure the overall authority of your store, however, this is dependent on the quality of backlinks and how well each keyword ranks.
It’s challenging to check rankings without some form of tool - Google does not really provide extensive tooling when trying to measure each keyword. You’ll be pleased to know other tools exist, and yes, for deeper analysis you’ll have to pay.
The number one tool for an aesthetically pleasing view of keywords is SheerSEO. It has both paid and free versions. The free version allows up to 10 tracked keywords - perfect for just getting started.
SheerSEO
Best of the best rank checker tools:
Semrush
Ahrefs
3, 5 Top Reasons Why Your Shopify website is Not Showing up on Google
3.1, Google Sandbox
The infamous Google Sandbox, whilst Google has not confirmed, or even reported on its existence, many website owners, marketers, and SEO experts believe that it exists.
The Google Sandbox is typically "a box", a "quarantine" for new, and stale domains, meaning you'll get zero traffic for 'n' months whilst Google determines whether your store is malicious, spammy, and more importantly contains valuable content.
How to Fix
Unfortunately, it's extremely difficult to fix, you really have to be patient. However, you can speed up the process by creating quality content, posting/engaging on social media, and most importantly acquiring quality backlinks.
No site is exempt from the sandbox, including us! We were in the "sandbox" for around one month: November 2021 to December 2021. It’s never fun hearing the crickets! Or standing in a ghost town. BUT you can speed up the process.
Here’s what we did:
- Created thorough and detailed base content (4 blog posts, and then 1 post per week)
- Created account and profile backlinks using our own guide: How to get easy backlinks the right way
- Used Quuu Promote for automated marketing, which in turn triggers social signals. Use social proof to also trigger social signals
- Tweaked the website every day to encourage regular site crawls
As you can see from our website performance (image above) we launched our blog in November 2021. During November it was the true sense of a Ghost town and rolling tumble weeds. However, we were convinced and seriously dedicated to speeding up the process, and we did!
By the end of November we could see our low-hanging fruit keywords were beginning to rank, thus increasing our impressions and then ultimately our clicks.
If you're one of the many eCommerce owners that's not blogging as the primary marketing channel, you are truly missing out on organic targeted traffic.
Every business should blog for business as a source of organic traffic. Ads, social marketing, and email marketing all play a part of a wider marketing strategy. Blogging is the key to longevity.
3.2, Index Issues
Indexing issues are the most likely cause for why your Shopify store is not showing up on Google - outside of being in the sandbox.
To confirm your site has or hasn't been indexed, go to the google address bar and type “site:{domain}”, replacing: “{domain}” with your Shopify store domain.
If you see your store listed, great! You've store has been indexed and it's still too new to start ranking keywords. If not, read on to learn how to fix.
How to Fix
If your store is not showing up when searching for your store with "site:{domain}" then the most likely scenario is you've not submitted a sitemap (assuming you've not been penalized).
We've written about sitemaps here: How to upload sitemap in Shopify
It's important to note, that if you've not been penalized and you've already uploaded a sitemap, then just be patient!
Google most certainly likes to ensure that what your offering is of value. To reiterate it's very rare for a Shopify store to be penalized.
3.3, Penalized
Being penalized is every site owner's nightmare, in the blink of an eye you could lose all rankings and your site fully de-indexed - Ouch!
This generally happens when you’ve gone rogue and started an awful link-building campaign, or your content is so dreadful that the big G places no value on it.
Now in the realms of Shopify, it’s very rare that you’ll be penalized due to content unless you’ve used some real shady tactics. In most cases, it will be because of backlinks.
How to Fix:
- Go to Google search console and look for any potential issues to be resolved
- Disavow any backlink that looks suspicious
- Build quality backlinks
- Create high-quality content
Now, this is not going to be easy, it may take 6 to 12 months for Google to reevaluate/decide whether the site is worthy enough to be indexed.
3.4, Highly Competitive
Your backlinks, content, and social efforts, just might not be enough. Whether you have a great product or not, it’s so highly competitive that Google leaves you stranded in a desert.
How to Fix:
- Start blogging and focus on low-hanging fruit keywords. The goal is to become an authority which in turn helps to rank in the SERPs.
- Post engagement content on Social media, not just products. Again, the goal is to build an audience that triggers one of Google’s ranking factors - social signals with social proof.
3.5, Zero backlinks
You have a great store, you have great products, and you have great blog posts but you’re still not ranking? Well, unfortunately, you just don’t have any authority, if no one is linking to your store, then Google assumes it’s not worthwhile.
How to Fix:
- Guest post! Guest posting can be a tremendously helpful method to increase authority and backlinks.
- Outsource to link building agencies/services - but proceed with caution!
Detailed information on guest posting and backlinks can be found in the following blog posts respectively.
The Takeaway
As stated above it’s very rare for Shopify stores to be penalized or fully de-indexed through poor content. If penalization does occur, it’s mostly likely through shady tactics and spam backlinks.
The number one method to ensure your Shopify store is indexed, is through submitting a Shopify sitemap.
To summarize we've briefly covered:
- 5 Top Reasons Why Your Shopify website is Not Showing up on Google
- How Long Does it Take to Rank My Shopify Store?
- How do I check My Shopify Store Ranking?
What next:
- Learn how to increase Shopify traffic
- Learn how to add a product to shopify that sells
- Shopify traffic but no sales? 14+ conversion tactics to try
- Learn how to blog for business to build trust and authority
- Share this post, every little helps.
- Subscribe to our newsletter below for tips and tricks to help boost sales.
Additional Shopify Resources
With Shopify being one of the largest eCommerce platforms on the market means you’ll never be short of resources to learn how to build a profitable eCommerce business.
Kanteneo aims to be the best Shopify blog on the market, but you may require additional resources to help you on that journey. Below we’ve listed a top-selling Shopify book by Veronica Jeans to help you learn how to launch a profitable business.
