Why your business isn't getting enquiries from Google

Most owners who say Google "does not work" for them have a problem at one specific stage, and they are often paying to fix a different one. A new website will not help if Google never indexed the old one, and more traffic will not help if the page it lands on gives nobody a reason to call. This guide walks through the four stages in the order a buyer experiences them, shows you how to check each one yourself for free, and tells you what to fix first.

Where do enquiries from Google actually come from?

When someone searches for a service, Google can show several kinds of result on the same page: ads labelled as sponsored, a map with a short list of nearby businesses (the local pack, built from Google Business Profiles), and the ordinary list of websites below it, which people in the trade call organic results. More and more searches also show an AI Overview at the top, a written summary with links to the pages it drew on.

These are separate systems with separate rules. Your Business Profile can appear in the map while your website is nowhere in the list below it, or the reverse. Ads appear because you paid for them. The map and the organic list cannot be bought: Google's own help pages for local results say there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking.

Whichever route a buyer takes, an enquiry needs four things to go right, in this order:

1. Found. Google knows your business and your website exist and has added your pages to its index, the catalogue of pages it is able to show.
2. Ranked. You appear near the top for the searches your buyers type, not just for your own name.
3. Clicked. When buyers see your listing, it looks like the right choice, so they pick you over the result next to you.
4. Convinced. The page they land on answers their questions and makes contacting you easy.

Each stage can only pass on what the stage before it gave it. Improving stage four does nothing if you fail at stage one, which is why the order of diagnosis matters more than the size of the budget.

Stage 1: Is your business on Google at all?

Start here, even if you are sure the answer is yes. Search Google for site:yourdomain.com, using your real domain with no spaces. Google's own SEO starter guide recommends this as the quick check: if pages from your site appear, you are in the index. If nothing appears, or only five pages out of fifty, nothing else in this guide matters until that is fixed.

Then search your exact business name, and your business name with your town. You should see your website and, if you meet customers in person or travel to them, your Business Profile with your reviews, hours and phone number.

The reasons for failing here are mechanical, not mysterious. A site launched with a setting that tells search engines to stay away (a "noindex" tag, often left over from a developer's test copy). A robots.txt file, the small file that tells crawlers where they may go, blocking Google. A new domain Google has not discovered yet. A Business Profile that was never verified, or was suspended for breaking Google's guidelines, for example by using a virtual office as the address. Each has a specific fix, and why your business is not showing on Google goes through them one by one.

The most useful free tool for this stage is Google Search Console, Google's own dashboard for website owners. It lists which of your pages are indexed, which are not, and the reason for each in a plain status message. If you have never set it up, the Search Console guide for business owners covers the twenty minutes of setup and the few reports worth reading.

Stage 2: Do you rank for the searches buyers actually type?

Being indexed means you are in the library. Ranking means you are on the shelf people actually look at. Buyers mostly choose from the map results and the first handful of websites, so ranking on page three for a search is, in practical terms, close to not ranking at all.

The trap at this stage is checking the wrong searches. Almost every business ranks first for its own name. That traffic is valuable, but those people already knew you; Google did not find them for you. The enquiries you are missing come from service searches by people who have not heard of you yet: "bespoke kitchen fitter leeds", "commercial electrician near me", "employment solicitor for small business".

Write down the ten searches that would bring you the most valuable work, then find where you appear for each. Searching yourself gives a rough picture, but Google tailors results to location and device, so the reliable source is the Performance report in Search Console. It shows the searches you actually appeared for, your average position and how many people clicked. Google added a branded queries filter in late 2025 that separates searches containing your business name from everything else. Where your site has it, it is the fastest way to see how much of your Google traffic is simply people looking you up.

If the searches you care about show a competitor and not you, the reasons are usually a mix of three things. Relevance: they have a page specifically about that service in that place, and you have one page listing everything. Prominence: they have more reviews, more mentions and more links from other websites. And, for map results, distance from the person searching. Why your competitors rank above you shows how to compare yourself against them honestly. If you used to rank and then fell, that is a different problem with different causes, covered in why your Google rankings dropped.

Stage 3: When people see you, do they click?

You can rank and still be passed over. In the Performance report, look for searches and pages with plenty of impressions (the number of times you were shown) but few clicks. That pattern means people saw you and chose someone else.

What they saw was a page title, a line or two of description, and in the map your star rating, photos and opening hours. Compare yours against the results either side of you:

• Your page title says what you do and where. "Home | Hartwell" tells a buyer nothing. A title that names the service and the town tells them they have found the right kind of business.
• Your description gives a reason to choose you. A specialism, a guarantee, how long you have been trading. Google sometimes writes its own description from your page text, which is one more reason your pages should open with plain facts.
• Your Business Profile is complete and current. The right categories, accurate hours, photos of real work, and recent reviews with replies. Three reviews from years ago next to a competitor with a hundred recent ones is not a close contest.

This stage is usually the cheapest to improve because most of the work is writing. It also matters more than it used to: when an AI Overview sits above the results, the links underneath have to work harder to earn the click.

Stage 4: Do visitors actually get in touch?

This is where most of the money is lost, and where owners least expect it. If Search Console shows clicks arriving but your phone is quiet, Google has done its part. The page has not.

Visitors from Google arrive with one question: can this business do my job, and should I contact them? A page that makes them work for the answer loses them. The usual culprits are a homepage that describes a feeling rather than a service, no prices or even price guidance, a contact form with a dozen fields, a phone number that cannot be tapped on a mobile, and a page slow enough that people give up before it finishes loading. Website traffic but no enquiries has a full checklist, in the order the problems tend to matter.

Speed deserves its own mention because it can be measured. Google's Core Web Vitals score how quickly your main content appears, how fast the page responds when someone taps, and whether things jump around while it loads. Google treats them as one signal among many and says relevance comes first, but a slow site loses buyers whether or not it loses rankings. Core Web Vitals explained translates the three scores and their thresholds into plain English.

Before blaming the website, check one thing: would you actually know if enquiries arrived? Forms that send to a former employee's inbox, a spam filter catching every message, or a tracking phone number that stopped forwarding are more common than anyone admits. Send yourself a test enquiry through every route on the site, on a phone.

How do you find your weak stage in one sitting?

You need access to Search Console, your Business Profile, and an honest count of last quarter's enquiries. Then work through these in order and stop at the first one that fails:

1. Run the site: search. If the number of results is far below the number of pages you know exist, or zero, the problem is stage 1.
2. In Search Console, open the Page indexing report. A large share of pages listed as not indexed, with reasons you do not recognise, is also stage 1, even if your homepage shows up.
3. Open the Performance report, set the date range to the last three months, and filter out searches containing your business name. Low impressions for your service searches means stage 2.
4. Sort the remaining searches by impressions. If the ones you care about have a click-through rate (clicks divided by impressions) far below your other searches, that is stage 3.
5. Compare clicks with enquiries over the same months. Hundreds of clicks and a handful of enquiries is stage 4.
6. In your Business Profile, check the performance figures for calls, direction requests and website clicks. If the profile is busy and the website is not, your map presence is doing the work, and the site is the place to start.

If two stages look weak, fix the earlier one first. Improving the conversion rate on traffic you do not receive is arithmetic on zero.

What should you fix first, and how long will it take?

For most established businesses, in order of value:

1. Make sure you can be found and contacted. Indexing problems, a missing or unverified Business Profile, broken forms. These are often fixed in days and reflected in Google within weeks.
2. Make the pages you already have say what you do, where, and why you. Rewrite page titles and opening paragraphs, add prices or price guidance, and make contacting you a single tap on a phone.
3. Build one strong page for each main service, and for each main area if you serve several. Each should answer the questions a buyer asks before calling: cost, timescale, process, what makes you different.
4. Strengthen your profile and reputation. Ask every happy customer for a review, reply to all of them, and keep your business name, address and phone number identical everywhere you are listed.
5. Earn mentions from other websites: trade bodies, suppliers, local press, partners. This is slow and cannot be faked, which is exactly why Google counts it.

Timing is the question everyone asks and the one most often answered dishonestly. Google's starter guide says some changes take effect in a few hours and others take several months, and suggests waiting a few weeks before judging whether a change worked. Fixes at stages 1, 3 and 4 usually show up fastest, because they change what happens to searches and visitors you already have. New rankings at stage 2 usually take months. How long SEO takes sets out realistic timelines and what speeds them up.

Measure enquiries, not rankings. Ask every new enquirer how they found you, and count the answers every month. That single habit tells you more than most SEO reports.

What will not get you more enquiries?

• Anyone who guarantees a first-place ranking. Google's guidance on hiring an SEO says plainly that no one can guarantee a number one ranking, and warns against those who claim to.
• Stuffing keywords into your Business Profile name. Google's Business Profile guidelines require your real-world business name, and breaking them can get the profile suspended, which removes you from the map entirely.
• Buying reviews or offering discounts for them. Google's policies prohibit fake and incentivised reviews, and removed reviews take your rating with them.
• Publishing piles of thin, generic articles. Google's spam policies specifically target content produced at scale mainly to rank. Two genuinely useful pages beat twenty filler posts.
• A redesign as the first move. A new site fixes stage 4 at best, and a careless one can lose the rankings you already have. If you do rebuild, read how to redesign without losing SEO first.

When should you get help, and what should it cost?

You can do most of the diagnosis above yourself, and many owners should. Outside help earns its cost when the problem is technical (indexing reasons you do not understand, a website move that went wrong), when you know the weak stage but do not have the hours to fix it, or when you want someone without a package to sell to tell you which stage is actually costing you work.

An audit is the usual first step. Prices vary enormously, from free automated reports to large agency projects, and the price says little about usefulness; what an SEO audit costs explains what each level gets you and what to insist on. If you are comparing providers, how to choose an SEO consultant lists the questions that separate the useful from the merely expensive.

M/AFZAL's Visibility Audit follows this same four-stage diagnosis: where you rank for your ten most valuable searches and who ranks above you, why the website loses visitors, and a ranked list of fixes you keep. It costs $700, fixed, takes 7 working days, and is listed with the other published prices.

One more place to look: more buyers now ask ChatGPT or read Google's AI Overviews before they click anything, and those tools lean on the same signals as the four stages above. The free ten-minute AI test shows whether they name you, and the guide to AI search visibility explains what to do if they do not.