Google and other search engines like Bing take time to crawl content from websites. There are no predictions or guarantees about when the site that you use with Lightspeed eCom (E-Series) will be indexed. New sites, hidden pages or sites with keywords that don’t match keywords visitors are using may not appear in search results.
The same way, it takes time for search engines to recognize that the site was deleted, URL was changed, or content is outdated.
Checking if Google indexed your site
To see if search engines like Google or Bing have already indexed your site, in a search bar enter "site:" followed by the URL of your domain. For example, "site:surfparadise.company.site":
In search results, you should see all of your site's pages — that means that Google is indexing your site. You will also see how many pages have been indexed so far. If none of your pages appear, it means that your site has not been indexed yet.
Helping search engines to crawl your site
To make it faster for your eCom site to appear in search results, you can follow the checklist for each search engine that will help to speed up crawling.
To make Google discover your online store faster:
- Verify your site with Google Search Console.
- Help Google discover the right content on your site by adding your Sitemap to the Search Console.
- Use keywords on your site’s content and product descriptions.
- Follow the comprehensive SEO checklist for the eCom site and store.
For Bing, follow the checklist on their website.
Removing your site from search results
Deleting a site or changing its URL doesn’t mean Google or other search engines will instantly update search results for your website. It takes time for them to recognize that the site, page, or image are no longer available.
You can speed up the process in two steps:
- Disable indexation
- Submit the request to manually remove the site
Step 1 — Disabling indexation
Disabling indexation will block your site from appearing in the search results.
- For a Lightspeed eCom site (Instant Site), you can disable indexation by going to the Online tab > Webstore (or Website) > Overview in Retail POS and turning off the "Allow search engines to index Instant Site" toggle.
- For a Wix site, follow the instructions in the Wix support center.
- For a WordPress site, follow the instructions on how to disable the search engine indexing.
- For any other custom site, you should contact your site admin to learn if it’s possible to stop indexation.
Once you stop the indexation, you can ask Google or Bing to remove your site from their search results.
Step 2 — Requesting removing the site
Requests to manually delete the site will be accepted for sites verified on Google or Bing. Otherwise, you will have to wait for search engines to automatically remove your site.
Learn how to manually request removals with: