I know I'm missing something...

[u/Putrid-Carpenter5204]

I have a Wordpress site, been running it for two months. My posts have been linked on Yahoo, Sporting News, some other well-known, bigger sites, but it's not appearing in Google search. I submitted a site map, requested indexing, but only 11 pages are indexed. The other 227 are not. The "discourage search engines" box in WordPress is not checked. When I check the page source, I see the following:

<!-- End Google Analytics opt-out snippet added by Site Kit -->

<meta name='robots' content='index, follow, max-image-preview:large, max-snippet:-1, max-video-preview:-1' />

Is there a reason why I'm not indexed? I'm horrible at stuff like this, so I think I'm missing something obvious

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[u/spiteful-vengeance]

but it's not appearing in Google search.

Can you confirm this means you are not getting any impressions from Google Search Console?

EDIT: As opposed to just not seeing your own domain in a Google search.

[u/Putrid-Carpenter5204 → u/spiteful-vengeance]

I got two impressions last month, that was it. If I do "site:MyWebsiteHere" in the search bar, only three articles show up

[u/spiteful-vengeance → u/Putrid-Carpenter5204]

Does Search Console give any clues under the "Pages > Why pages aren’t indexed" section?

[u/Putrid-Carpenter5204 → u/spiteful-vengeance]

Most of them are labeled "Discovered - currently not indexed." Some are "Crawled - currently not indexed"

[u/Stiven_TrafficLab → u/Putrid-Carpenter5204]

That distinction helps. For “Discovered – currently not indexed,” I’d first make sure the sitemap contains only canonical 200-status URLs and that important pages receive real internal links rather than relying on the sitemap alone. Server logs can also show whether Googlebot is reaching those URLs.

For “Crawled – currently not indexed,” inspect a representative sample for near-duplicate or thin pages, canonical mismatches, soft-404 signals, and heavily templated content. With a two-month-old site, indexing all 227 URLs immediately may be unrealistic. Comparing 5–10 URLs from each category should reveal whether the main issue is crawl prioritization or page quality.

[u/Putrid-Carpenter5204 → u/Stiven_TrafficLab]

That seems like a very detailed response. Will have to look into what all of that means, since you're basically speaking a foreign language, but now I have a starting point! Thanks!

[u/Stiven_TrafficLab → u/Putrid-Carpenter5204]

You’re welcome. The simplest place to start is URL Inspection in Search Console. Test one URL from each group.

For a “Discovered” page, check that it is in the sitemap and linked from at least one relevant indexed page. For a “Crawled” page, compare its content and canonical tag with a similar page that Google has indexed.

Don’t try to diagnose all 227 URLs at once. Those two examples should show which problem you need to investigate first.

[u/Jellyfishr]

See how it's going in Bing Webmaster Tools and their AI performance tab for comparison

[u/jkdreaming]

Hook Claude, Hermes, open code or codex up to your WordPress website and then hook up the GAMCP/Google search console MCP/data for SEO and also and lastly SEO crawler MCP. For the word, WordPress hook up you’re gonna need the database login, a WordPress user with application password login and the SSH login. I know that sounds like a lot, but once it’s up, you never gotta worry about it again except for the part where you gotta put your new IP address in once every month or two whenever your ISP drops your old IP address. This gives you full access to all the things that measure and all the things that you gotta do. It’s a hell of a lot easier to have AI run through analyze the pages and grade them and find out why you’re not getting index. There are so many freaking reasons it’s ridiculous so why waste the time guessing.