Launch day feels like the finish line, but it's the start of the part that actually determines whether the site does its job. Our new website checklist covers what to demand before you pay for a build. This one picks up the moment the site goes live: what to check, and when, over the first 30 days.
Week 1: Confirm the Basics Actually Work
- Search Console shows the property as verified, and the XML sitemap has been submitted and shows as "Success," not "Couldn't fetch." If nothing has happened yet, that's expected on day one - check back in 48-72 hours rather than assuming a problem.
- Analytics is receiving real-time data. Open a page yourself and confirm it registers in GA4's realtime report. This catches the single most common launch mistake: a tracking snippet that never made it into the live build.
- Every form actually delivers. Submit each contact, quote, or booking form yourself, end to end, and confirm the notification arrives somewhere a person will see it. A form that "looks fine" in the browser but silently fails to send is invisible until a real enquiry is lost.
- No leftover
noindexor "discourage search engines" setting from the staging build. This single checkbox, left ticked by accident, is the most common reason a brand-new site never appears in Google at all - see why your website isn't showing up on Google if week two arrives and nothing has been indexed yet.
Week 2: Watch for Early Errors
- Check Search Console's Pages report for a spike in "Not found (404)" or "Blocked by robots.txt." A handful of 404s in the first fortnight is normal (old bookmarks, a stray internal link); a large or growing number is not - our guide to fixing 404 errors covers when to redirect and when to leave one alone.
- Spot-check mobile rendering on an actual phone, not just a browser's device-emulation view - layout bugs that only show on real hardware are common and easy to miss in a desktop-only QA pass.
- Confirm HTTPS is fully clean - no mixed-content warnings, no browser padlock issues. These sometimes only surface once real traffic starts hitting pages that weren't part of the pre-launch QA checklist.
Weeks 3-4: Look at the First Real Signal
- Search Console's Coverage/Pages report shows your important pages as indexed, not just "Discovered - currently not indexed." A new site can sit in the second state for a few weeks; if your homepage and key service pages are still there past 30 days, that's worth investigating rather than waiting out.
- Core Web Vitals have a baseline reading. They need real user traffic to populate, so weeks 3-4 is typically the earliest point there's enough data to be worth checking - see what Core Web Vitals measure if the report is unfamiliar.
- Key events in GA4 are firing on real visits, not just your own test submissions from week one. Confirm at least one genuine enquiry has registered as a tracked event, not only a pageview.
The 30-Day Question
By day 30, you should be able to answer: is the sitemap accepted, are the important pages indexed (or is there a clear, understood reason if not), are forms producing real enquiries, and has Search Console raised no unexpected security or manual-action notices? If the answer to all four is yes, the site is doing its job at the infrastructure level, and any remaining work is genuine SEO and content growth rather than fixing something broken at launch.
Common Questions
How long before a new site starts ranking at all? There's no fixed timeline - it depends on domain history, competition, and how much content exists at launch - but indexing (appearing in Google's index at all) should happen within days to a couple of weeks for a technically healthy site. Ranking for competitive terms is a separate, much slower process.
What if the sitemap still shows errors after a week? Check it's returning a valid XML response (open the URL directly in a browser) and that it isn't blocked by robots.txt. Both are common launch-week mistakes that are quick to fix once spotted.
Do I need to do anything if everything above looks fine? Move on to routine maintenance - a five-minute weekly Search Console check, as covered in our Search Console beginner's guide, rather than daily monitoring. The first 30 days need closer attention than every month after.
What to Do Next
Run through this list in order rather than all at once - some checks (Core Web Vitals, indexing status) genuinely need time to populate and will just show "no data yet" if you look too early. Once the 30-day checks are clear, a full technical SEO checklist pass and a free AuditCrow scan are the natural next step for ongoing structure, speed, and accessibility issues to work through.
