You built a website with Lovable, Bolt, v0, Replit or a chat assistant. It looks good, it's live, and you've sent the link to friends. Then you search for your business name and Google shows nothing. That's common, and the cause is usually ordinary. Google may not have found the site yet. A setting may be telling Google to stay away. Or Google may be finding a different copy of the site from the one you meant to publish.
This guide works through seven checks in order, from the simplest to the more technical. It covers how long indexing takes, setting up Google Search Console and using URL Inspection, your sitemap and robots.txt file, how sites that rely on JavaScript can be harder for Google to read, a noindex rule left on from building, preview and duplicate domains, and your page titles, descriptions and Google Business Profile.
Success looks like this. Search Console shows your homepage as "URL is on Google", your sitemap reads Success, the screenshot Google takes of your page shows your real content, and only one version of your domain appears in results. You don't need to write code for most of it.
Step 1: Give Google time, and check whether it has found you
Google finds new websites mostly by following links from pages it already knows. A brand new site with no links pointing to it can sit unnoticed for a while. Google's own guidance says crawling can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, and it never guarantees that every page will be indexed. Indexed just means Google has stored the page and can show it in results.
So if you published yesterday, nothing is broken yet. If it has been a few weeks, work through the steps below. Our guide to how long a new website takes to show on Google explains the timing in more detail.
Searching for your business name is a poor test, because a new site rarely ranks for anything in its first weeks. Search for your exact domain instead, such as site:yourbusiness.com.au. If pages come back, Google has indexed them and the problem is ranking, which is a different job. If nothing comes back, Google hasn't indexed the site, and the next steps will usually show you why.
Step 2: Set up Google Search Console and inspect your homepage
Google Search Console is Google's free tool for website owners. It's where Google tells you which pages it has indexed, which it hasn't and why. Without it you're guessing.
Add your site as a Domain property if you can edit your domain's DNS settings, the records at the company you bought the domain from. A Domain property covers every version of your address in one place, including www and non-www. Google verifies you own it with a short TXT record. Some builders can do this for you. Lovable's documentation says its Search Console connection verifies your site with a tag added to your app's HTML, so you don't touch DNS. Our step-by-step guide to adding your website to Google Search Console covers both routes.
Once you're in, paste your homepage address into the URL Inspection bar at the top. You'll see one of two things.
- URL is on Google: the page is indexed and eligible to appear. Google notes this doesn't guarantee it will show for any particular search.
- URL is not on Google: the report gives a reason, such as "Excluded by 'noindex' tag", "Blocked by robots.txt" or "Discovered, currently not indexed". The reason tells you which step below to jump to.
Then select Test live URL. This fetches the page as it is right now, which is how you confirm a fix worked. Select View tested page to see the HTML Google received, the response headers, any JavaScript errors and, for a successful test, a screenshot of the page as Google rendered it. That screenshot matters for Step 4.
If the live test passes, select Request indexing once. Google says there is a quota on these requests, and asking again for the same address won't get it crawled any faster.
Step 3: Check your sitemap and robots.txt file
Two small files at the root of your site tell Google what to look at. Most AI builders create them, but they're often wrong in ways that are easy to miss.
Your sitemap
A sitemap is a list of the pages you want Google to find, usually at yourbusiness.com.au/sitemap.xml. Open it in your browser and read it. Google asks for full addresses, starting with https and your domain, and only the pages you want to appear in results. Lovable's documentation says it creates a robots.txt file with every new project but not always a sitemap, and its built-in review flags sitemaps with placeholder addresses, partial addresses or links to another domain. Those are the faults to look for in any builder's sitemap, especially one that still lists the builder's preview address after you've moved to your own domain.
When it looks right, submit it in Search Console under Sitemaps and check the status reads Success. Google treats a sitemap as a hint, so it helps Google find pages but doesn't force them into results.
Your robots.txt file
Open yourbusiness.com.au/robots.txt. This file tells crawlers which parts of the site they may visit. The line to worry about is "Disallow: /" under "User-agent: *", which blocks every crawler from the whole site. Builders sometimes add it while a project is private, and it can survive into the live site. On a live site you want crawlers allowed, plus a line that points to your sitemap, such as "Sitemap: https://yourbusiness.com.au/sitemap.xml".
Robots.txt is often misunderstood. Google says it isn't a way to keep a page out of Google. A blocked page can still appear in results if other sites link to it, just without a description. To keep a page out of results, use noindex, covered in Step 5.
Step 4: Make sure Google sees your content, not a blank page
This is the cause most specific to AI-built sites. Many of them are single-page apps built with React. A single-page app sends the browser an almost empty page plus a bundle of JavaScript, and the JavaScript then builds the content on the visitor's device. This is called client-side rendering. People never notice, because their phone runs the JavaScript in a fraction of a second. Search engines have to do the same work before they can read anything.
What Google says about JavaScript sites
Google's JavaScript SEO documentation says it processes these sites in three phases: crawling, rendering and indexing. Pages wait in a queue to be rendered. That wait may be a few seconds, and it can be longer depending on Google's resources. Google can read JavaScript sites, but it still recommends server-side rendering or pre-rendering, where the server sends finished HTML, because it's faster for visitors and crawlers and because, in Google's words, "not all bots can run JavaScript".
The same documentation lists faults that are common in single-page apps:
- Addresses with a # in them: pages like yoursite.com/#/about are a bad practice, because Google can't reliably follow them. Each page needs a real address such as yoursite.com/about.
- Links that aren't links: Google only follows links written as a proper <a> tag with an href. Buttons that change the page with JavaScript alone hide your inner pages from Google.
- Error pages that look like real pages: a single-page app often shows its "page not found" screen while telling Google the page loaded fine. Google calls these soft 404s and suggests redirecting to a real not-found page or adding noindex to the error view.
What Lovable and Bolt do about it
The builders have been closing this gap. Lovable's documentation says apps created from 13 May 2026 use TanStack Start and return fully rendered HTML on every request. Older Lovable apps built with React and Vite stay single-page apps for people, while verified crawlers, such as search engines and AI search crawlers, are sent rendered pages on Lovable's published addresses. Lovable warns that content that loads late may be missing, and that third-party SEO scanners aren't verified crawlers, so they can report your pages as empty when Google sees them fine. Bolt's October 2025 Bolt v2 announcement describes SEO Boosting, which creates a ready-to-go HTML version of each page ahead of time.
The catch is hosting. Lovable describes crawler rendering as part of how Lovable hosts your app, and its documentation doesn't say it carries over when you export an older React and Vite project to another host. If you've moved your site, assume you're serving a plain single-page app until a live test proves otherwise.
The check is the same for every builder and host. Run Test live URL in Search Console, open View tested page, and look at the screenshot and the HTML. If you see your headings and text, Google can read the page. If you see a blank page, a loading spinner or an HTML file that's mostly a single empty div, Google is struggling, and that's the problem to fix first. The fix depends on the tool: upgrading an older Lovable project to TanStack Start, switching on your builder's pre-rendering option, or having a developer pre-render the pages at build time.
Step 5: Remove a noindex rule left on from building
A noindex rule tells Google not to list a page. It's useful while a site is being built, and it's easy to forget once the site goes live. Google reads it in two places: a meta tag in the page's HTML, such as <meta name="robots" content="noindex">, or an X-Robots-Tag header that the server sends with the page. The header is invisible on the page itself, which is why it catches people out.
Search Console will tell you. URL Inspection shows "Excluded by 'noindex' tag" and the Page indexing report lists every page where Google found one. To check yourself, search your page source for the word noindex, and look at the response headers in View tested page.
Two details matter for JavaScript sites. Google's documentation says that if the original HTML contains noindex, Google may skip rendering the page, so JavaScript that removes the tag afterwards may never run. The tag has to be absent from the HTML the server sends. And noindex only works if Google can reach the page, so a page blocked in robots.txt that also carries noindex can still turn up in results.
Step 6: Make sure Google indexes one domain, the right one
An AI-built site often lives at several addresses at once: the builder's subdomain (such as yourapp.lovable.app), a host's address (such as yourapp.vercel.app), preview links for each change, and your own domain with and without www. If Google can reach more than one of them, it may list the wrong one, or split its attention between copies.
Preview and staging addresses
Some hosts keep previews out of Google for you. Vercel's documentation says every deployment from a non-production branch carries an X-Robots-Tag: noindex header by default, except when a custom domain is assigned to that branch. Your main production address on vercel.app is a different case. Vercel's guide on duplicate content says that if both the vercel.app address and your own domain serve the same pages, choose your own domain as the preferred one, then redirect the vercel.app address to it or point each page's canonical tag at the matching page on your domain.
On Lovable, its documentation says you can set one primary domain and other connected domains redirect to it. It also says that after you connect a custom domain, you should verify it in Search Console and resubmit your sitemap.
www and non-www
To Google, yourbusiness.com.au and www.yourbusiness.com.au are two addresses. Google's advice is to pick one as your canonical, meaning the official version, and redirect the others to it. It describes redirects as a strong signal, and it prefers https versions over http. Type all four combinations (http and https, with and without www) into your browser. Each one should land on the same single address.
You don't need to pay for hosting to get any of this right. The free plans on Vercel, Netlify and Cloudflare Pages can serve a site that Google indexes well, as long as the redirects and domain settings are done properly. Managed hosting is worth paying for when you'd rather someone else set up and keep an eye on those details. When we move a site onto Lumeen hosting, we connect the domain, set up SSL and redirect the old page addresses, so links and search rankings carry over, and we leave your email as it is.
Step 7: Write real titles and descriptions, and link your Google Business Profile
Once Google can find and read your pages, what it shows depends on what you've told it. AI builders often leave the project name or a placeholder as the title of every page, because a single-page app starts with one HTML file for the whole site.
Page titles
The title is the clickable blue line in Google's results. Google's guidance is that every page should have a title that's descriptive, concise and unique, without repeated boilerplate or stuffed keywords. A title like "Home" or "Vite + React" gives Google nothing to work with. Google may rewrite a title that doesn't match the page, using your headings or the text of links pointing to it, and that process is fully automated.
Meta descriptions
The meta description is a short summary of the page. Google says it sometimes uses it for the snippet under your title, when it describes the page better than the page text does. Write one for each important page. Google says identical descriptions across a site aren't helpful, and while there's no length limit, long descriptions get cut off in results. Lovable's documentation gives the same advice for its apps: unique titles and descriptions for important pages, no placeholder text, and no canonical tags that all point to the homepage.
Google Business Profile
If you serve customers in a local area, your Google Business Profile often appears before your website does. Google's help pages say you can add your website to your profile by entering the full address, starting with https, and that Googlebot must not be blocked on your site. Use the same single domain you chose in Step 6. Our guide to setting up your Google Business Profile covers the rest of the profile.
If you've worked through all seven steps and some pages are still missing, the Page indexing report will usually name the cause. Our guides to Discovered, currently not indexed and why a website isn't showing up on Google cover the less common ones.
Key takeaways
- (01)
Google says crawling a new site can take from a few days to a few weeks. Search site:yourdomain to see whether anything is indexed yet.
- (02)
Use Search Console's URL Inspection and Test live URL. The screenshot shows whether Google sees your content or a blank JavaScript page.
- (03)
Check robots.txt, your sitemap and the page source for a leftover noindex. Each can keep a finished site out of Google.
- (04)
Pick one domain, redirect every other version to it, and give each page its own title and description.
Frequently asked questions
Can Google index a website built with Lovable or Bolt?
Yes. Google can render JavaScript, and both builders now send crawlers ready-made HTML in some setups. Lovable says apps created from 13 May 2026 are rendered on the server, and older apps get rendered pages for verified crawlers on Lovable hosting. Check your own site with Test live URL in Search Console.
Why does my site show up under lovable.app or vercel.app instead of my domain?
Google found the builder's or host's address first, or can still reach it. Make your own domain the primary one, redirect the other addresses to it or point canonical tags at your domain, then verify your domain in Search Console and resubmit your sitemap.
How do I know if my site has a noindex tag?
Inspect the page in Google Search Console. It will say "Excluded by 'noindex' tag" if Google found one. You can also search the page source for noindex and check the response headers in View tested page, because the rule can be sent as an X-Robots-Tag header.
Does submitting my sitemap get my site on Google faster?
It helps Google find your pages, but Google treats a sitemap as a hint, not an instruction. Submit it once, check the status reads Success, and request indexing for your homepage. Repeating the request doesn't speed things up.
More answers on price, hosting and timing in our FAQ.