We reviewed the websites of three established companies. One asks Google not to show it

This week we reviewed the websites of three established companies: an international transport and logistics company, a financial services group and a B2B consulting firm. None of them is a small business that built its site over a weekend: all three have teams, brands and budgets. And all three have problems that customers and Google notice before they do.

We won't name them: the point isn't to expose anyone but to show what breaks when a website launches and nobody looks at it again. After each case, you'll find how to check the same thing on your own site, no technical background needed.

Key takeaways

• +One of the three sites has every page marked "noindex": it asks Google not to show it. On top of that, its page title and footer carry another company's name.
• +Another returns a "404 Not Found" error over http, has a security certificate 14 days from expiring, and has a page that says "Hello world!" published, in the sitemap it hands to Google.
• +The third publishes schedules dated 20 months ago on one of its most-used customer pages, and its homepage takes more than 10 seconds to load on a phone.
• +All three are slow on mobile: between 7.5 and 10.3 seconds to show the main content, when Google considers anything under 2.5 seconds good.
• +They run on different platforms (WordPress with a theme, custom WordPress and Wix). The platform isn't the problem: nobody checks the site after it goes live.

How we reviewed them

On October 2, 2026, from the outside and with no internal access: we read the code of the homepage and main pages, the server headers, the redirects, the security certificate, the robots.txt file and the sitemaps, and we measured speed with Lighthouse, Google's tool, in mobile mode. It's the same thing anyone with a browser and some patience can see.

Case 1: the website that asks Google not to show it

The consulting firm has a clean site, in English and Spanish, with services, team and testimonials. The problem is in a line nobody sees: every page carries a "noindex" tag, which tells Google not to include it in search results. The two sitemaps listed in its robots.txt also return errors. As far as Google is concerned, this website barely exists.

There's more: the title in the browser tab, the footer and the legal notice carry the name of another consulting firm, from another country, with almost identical copy. There may be a relationship between the two, and the "noindex" may be deliberate. But a potential client has no way of knowing, and the only way to get in touch is an email address: no form, phone number or office address.

How to check it on your site

• +Go to your site, right-click, choose "View page source" and search (Ctrl+F or Cmd+F) for "noindex". If it shows up on pages you want people to find, you have a problem.
• +Wix, WordPress and most platforms have a setting along the lines of "allow search engines to index this site". It's often turned off while the site is being built, and sometimes nobody turns it back on.
• +Search Google for "site:yourdomain.com". If nothing comes up, or far fewer pages than you have, start here.

Case 2: the website that errors out over http and leaves "Hello world!" published

The financial group has a polished site with a custom theme and good technical scores. But if someone types the address with http instead of https —or clicks an old link, an email signature or a PDF that uses it— they don't reach the site: they get a server "404 Not Found" page.

The security certificate, the one that puts the padlock in the browser, expires 14 days after our review. If it isn't renewed in time, browsers show a full-screen warning before letting anyone in. For a financial company, that's the worst thing a client can see.

And its sitemap, the file that tells Google which pages to index, still lists the sample pages WordPress creates on install: "¡Hola mundo!", "Hello world!" and "Sample Page", plus a "Blog test" page and an empty listing. All of them load, and none carries an instruction for Google to ignore it.

How to check it on your site

• +Type your address with http:// in front, with and without www. All four combinations should end up on the same https page.
• +Click the icon to the left of the address bar, open the certificate details and check the expiration date. If it expires in less than a month, ask who renews it.
• +Search Google for "site:yourdomain.com hello world" and "site:yourdomain.com sample page". If anything comes up, delete it or remove it from the index.

Case 3: the website that publishes 20-month-old schedules

The logistics company has one of its most useful customer tools in the main menu: a departure schedule page. The page says "Last updated" with a date from this year, but the table shows departures from January and February 2025. Anyone planning a shipment sees information from 20 months ago and has to call to confirm it.

On a phone, the homepage takes 10.3 seconds to show its main content and downloads 7.2 MB: a 6 MB video that also loads on mobile, around 1 MB of styles embedded in every page and 58 JavaScript files from the theme. And Google has more than 6,000 tag pages to crawl —many with a single article— against roughly 2,000 news posts: the site is asking it to crawl nearly empty pages.

How to check it on your site

• +List the pages that show dates, prices, schedules or stock, and check when each one was last updated. If they depend on an automated process, someone needs to find out when that process fails.
• +Run your homepage through PageSpeed Insights in mobile mode and look at "Largest Contentful Paint". Google rates anything above 4 seconds as poor.
• +Compare how many pages your site really has with how many "site:yourdomain.com" shows. If Google sees far more, it's probably indexing tags, archives or test pages.

What they have in common

None of these problems is expensive to fix. Turning indexing back on, redirecting http to https, renewing a certificate, deleting sample pages or serving a lighter video on mobile are tasks measured in hours, not months. What they have in common is that nobody was watching.

A website isn't a brochure you print once: it has certificates that expire, processes that stop updating, plugins that add pages and settings someone switched off during development. All three companies have a budget for a website; what they don't have is someone responsible for checking it every month.

If it happens to companies with teams and budgets, it could be happening to yours right now.

A ten-minute checklist for your website

• +Search for "noindex" in the source of your homepage and service pages.
• +Visit over http and without www: you should land on the same https site.
• +Check your security certificate's expiration date.
• +Search Google for "site:yourdomain.com" and review which pages show up.
• +Search for "hello world", "sample page" and "test" within your domain.
• +Make sure pages with dates, prices or schedules are up to date.
• +Run your homepage through PageSpeed Insights in mobile mode.
• +Check that every page title carries your company's name, not a template's or another brand's.
• +Test your contact form or chat button from a phone.

If you want us to review yours, at loco22 we run this same diagnosis on your site and tell you what to fix first, with the details behind each finding. Get in touch and we'll start with a free consultation.