When I first set up my Blogger blog, I spent weeks writing posts and wondering why nothing was showing up in Google. I would search for the exact title of my post, and nothing. Not even a trace. It took me a while to realise that the problem was not my content at all. It was my settings. Blogger had not been told to let Google in.
That is what this post is about. Not SEO tricks. Not keyword research. Just the core Blogger settings that determine whether Google can even find your blog in the first place. If these settings are wrong, it does not matter how good your content is. Your blog will sit in silence while Google walks straight past it.
I am going to walk you through every setting you need to check and configure inside your Blogger dashboard. By the time you finish reading, your blog will be fully open to Google and ready to be crawled and indexed properly.
Why Your Blogspot Blog Might Not Show Up on Google
A lot of new bloggers assume that publishing a post automatically means Google will find it. That is not how it works. Google discovers content through a process called crawling. Its bots travel across the web, following links and reading pages. But before any of that can happen, your blog needs to give those bots permission to enter.
Blogger has a setting that controls exactly this. If it is turned off, Google's crawler sees your blog and moves on without indexing a single page. Many bloggers never even know this setting exists, yet it is the single most important thing you need to configure before anything else.
There are also other settings deeper inside your Blogger dashboard that affect how Googlebot crawls your site, which pages it indexes, and how efficiently it spends its crawl budget on your blog. Getting all of these right from the start saves you from a lot of frustration down the line. I know because I had to fix them all after the fact, and that process took far longer than it needed to.
Step 1: Turn On "Visible to Search Engines"
This is the most important setting in your entire Blogger dashboard. Everything else is secondary to this one switch.
Here is how to find it. Log in to your Blogger account and go to your blog's dashboard. In the left sidebar, click on Settings. Scroll down until you see a section called Privacy. Under that section, you will find a toggle labelled Visible to search engines. Make sure it is switched on.
When this setting is off, Blogger adds a noindex directive to every page on your site. That tells Google not to store your blog in its index. No index means no search rankings, no matter what else you do. This is the root cause behind most cases where a Blogger blog never appears in Google at all.
According to Google's official Blogger Help documentation, turning this setting on is the required first step to letting search engines find your blog. It sounds almost too simple, but I have seen countless bloggers skip this and spend months wondering why their content is invisible.
Once you switch it on, save your settings and move on to the next step. This alone will not guarantee Google finds your blog immediately, but it removes the biggest barrier that was standing in the way.
Step 2: Set Up Your Custom Robots.txt
Now that your blog is visible to search engines, the next thing to configure is your robots.txt file. This is a small text file that tells search engine bots which parts of your blog to crawl and which parts to ignore.
Blogger generates a default robots.txt automatically, but it is not optimised. The default version often allows Google to crawl pages that have no real SEO value, which wastes your crawl budget on things like label pages, search result pages, and paginated archives. These pages are mostly duplicate content, and having them crawled repeatedly takes attention away from your actual posts.
To set up a custom robots.txt, go back to your Blogger Settings page. Scroll down to the section called Crawlers and Indexing. You will see an option labelled Custom robots.txt. Click on it to expand the field and enter your custom code.
Here is the robots.txt code that I use and recommend for most Blogger blogs:
User-agent: Mediapartners-Google
Disallow:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /search
Allow: /
Sitemap: https://www.yourblogname.com/sitemap.xml
Replace the sitemap URL with your actual blog URL. If you are on a custom domain like I am, use that. If you are still on a blogspot address, it will look like https://yourblogname.blogspot.com/sitemap.xml.
Let me explain what each line does. The first block with Mediapartners-Google is specifically for Google's AdSense bot. Leaving Disallow empty for this bot means it is allowed to read your entire site, which helps it serve more relevant ads if you use AdSense. The second block applies to all other crawlers. Disallow: /search tells bots not to crawl your label and search result pages, since those pages are thin, repetitive, and not worth indexing. Allow: / keeps the rest of your blog fully open. The Sitemap line points search engines directly to your sitemap so they can find all your posts without having to guess.
This setup keeps your crawl budget focused on your real content while blocking the low-value pages that would otherwise clutter your index.
Step 3: Configure Your Custom Robots Header Tags
Robots header tags are a layer of indexing control that sits on top of your robots.txt. While robots.txt controls whether Googlebot can crawl a page, header tags control whether it should index that page and display it in search results. Blogger lets you set these tags differently for three different types of pages on your blog: your homepage, your archive and search pages, and your individual posts and pages.
To find this setting, go to Settings, scroll to the Crawlers and Indexing section, and look for Enable custom robots header tags. Toggle it on.
Once enabled, you will see three separate options to configure. Here is exactly what to set for each one.
Homepage Tags: Enable "all" and "noodp". The "all" tag tells Google there are no restrictions on indexing or serving your homepage. The "noodp" tag prevents Google from using its own descriptions for your blog instead of the one you have written. This matters for how your blog appears in search results.
Archive and Search Page Tags: Enable "noindex" and "noodp". Archive pages and search result pages inside Blogger are essentially duplicate content. They show the same posts arranged differently, grouped by date or label. You do not want these pages competing with your actual posts in search results, and you do not want Google wasting its time indexing them. Setting noindex here keeps them out of the index entirely.
Post and Page Tags: Enable "all" and "noodp". This is the most important group because it applies to every individual blog post and static page you publish. Setting "all" tells Google to index them freely and display them in search results. Adding "noodp" again ensures your custom meta descriptions are used rather than whatever Google might pull from elsewhere.
Save each section after making your selection. These three configurations together make sure that only the content worth ranking actually gets indexed, while the rest stays out of Google's way.
Step 4: Enable the Search Description Feature
The search description setting is something a lot of bloggers overlook, and it has a quiet but real impact on how your posts appear in Google search results.
When someone finds your post on Google, they see a title and a short description beneath it. That description is called a meta description. If you have not set one, Google will pull random text from your post, often from wherever it happens to land first. That random text rarely makes a good first impression and can hurt your click-through rate.
Blogger allows you to write a custom search description for each post, but first you need to enable the feature globally. Go to Settings, scroll to the Meta Tags section, and turn on Enable search description. Once this is on, every post editor will show a Search Description field in the right sidebar where you can write a custom 150 to 160 character summary of your post.
This does not directly affect whether your blog is indexed, but it affects how Google presents your content once it is. A well-written meta description that matches the search intent of your reader can be the difference between someone clicking your result and scrolling past it.
Now that your blog is set up to be found and indexed properly, the next step is making sure Google can consistently discover your content. If your posts are getting indexed but traffic is still slow, it helps to understand the broader picture of whether and how Blogger blogs actually rank on Google based on real experience.
Step 5: Submit Your Sitemap to Google Search Console
A sitemap is a file that lists every post and page on your blog. Submitting it to Google Search Console tells Google exactly where your content lives and makes it much easier for Googlebot to find and index new posts quickly.
Blogger automatically generates a sitemap for your blog. You do not need to create one manually. The default sitemap URL follows this format:
https://www.yourblogname.com/sitemap.xml
To submit it, go to Google Search Console and open your property. In the left sidebar, click on Sitemaps. Paste your sitemap URL into the field and click Submit. Google will then begin using that sitemap to discover your posts on a regular basis.
One thing worth noting from my own experience: Blogger also generates a separate sitemap for pages at sitemap-pages.xml. If you have published static pages on your blog such as an About page or a Contact page, it is worth submitting that one as well.
After submission, Google Search Console will show you how many URLs it has discovered and how many it has indexed. If the indexed number is much lower than the submitted number, that is a signal to investigate. Sometimes it points to a setting conflict, sometimes to content quality issues. Either way, this dashboard gives you the visibility to catch problems early.
If you ever find that posts which should be indexed are not showing up in Google, there is a more detailed walkthrough of the diagnosis and recovery process in this guide on how to fix Blogger posts that got de-indexed by Google.
Step 6: Check Your Blog Speed
This one might surprise you in a post about searchability settings, but hear me out. Google uses page speed as a ranking signal, and more importantly, a very slow blog can discourage Googlebot from completing a full crawl. If your blog takes too long to load, the crawler may time out before it has indexed all your posts.
Inside your Blogger Settings, there is not a direct speed control, but there are decisions that affect it. Avoiding too many third-party widgets, keeping your template clean, and compressing images before uploading all contribute to a faster blog. These are not settings you flip in one place, but they are directly connected to how discoverable your blog becomes over time.
I went through this process myself and documented exactly what made a measurable difference on my blog in this post on how to increase website speed in Blogger. The improvements I made had a visible effect on how quickly my newer posts started appearing in Google.
Step 7: The Complete Blogger Searchability Checklist
Before you close your Blogger dashboard, run through this checklist to make sure everything is in place. These are the exact settings that determine whether Google can find, crawl, and index your blog properly.
- Visible to search engines is turned on under Settings, Privacy
- Custom robots.txt is enabled and configured with the correct code for your blog URL
- Custom robots header tags are enabled with the correct settings for homepage, archive pages, and posts
- Search description is enabled under Settings, Meta Tags
- Your sitemap has been submitted to Google Search Console
- Your blog loads at a reasonable speed with no obvious performance issues
If every item on that list is checked, your blog is set up correctly at the settings level. From here, the work shifts to content. Google needs to see that your posts are useful, original, and written for real readers. But none of that matters if the technical foundation is broken, and this checklist makes sure it is not.
What to Do After Your Settings Are Configured
Once your Blogger settings are in order, the next challenge is building consistent traffic. Getting indexed is just the beginning. Google needs to see regular activity, quality content, and engagement signals before it starts ranking your posts in meaningful positions.
While your SEO efforts are building, there are also free traffic channels you can use in the meantime to bring readers to your blog without waiting for Google to do all the work. I covered the strategies that actually moved the needle for me in this post on how to get free traffic to your Blogger blog without paying for ads.
The combination of correct Blogger settings and a steady content and promotion strategy is what separates the blogs that eventually get traction from the ones that stay invisible. Start with the settings. Get the foundation right. Then build from there.
If you found this post useful, share it with another blogger who is still struggling to get their Blogspot blog seen on Google. Sometimes the answer is much simpler than anyone thinks.
