Lately, I’ve gotten into the habit of checking one number in Google Search Console:
Did anyone click through to my site from Google?
This week, the answer was:
1 click.
Not great.
But compared to when the site had almost no exposure at all, at least something is happening.
Google has started indexing SmartConvert, a small online conversion tool I’m building. Right now, 13 pages are in the index.
The problem is:
Getting indexed is not the same as getting traffic.
I’ve been learning that the hard way.
The numbers so far
Over the last 7 days, Google Search Console showed:
- 36 impressions
- 1 click
Overall, since launch:
- 404 impressions
- 5 clicks
- Average position: 71
GA4 showed 28 users this week.
None of these numbers are impressive. But I’m sharing them because I think the gap between “indexed” and “getting traffic” is something a lot of indie developers run into.
You submit your sitemap.
You verify everything.
You see pages slowly appear in Google.
And then you wait.
And wait.
And still get almost no clicks.
What I did this week instead of adding more features
My first instinct when traffic is low is usually:
Build more tools.
That’s the developer brain talking. More pages, more features, more surface area.
But this week, I deliberately didn’t add a bunch of new tools.
Instead, I worked on four basic things:
- Added user login
- Added a blog
- Added Chinese language support
- Submitted the site to Bing
None of these feels as satisfying as shipping a new tool. But I’m starting to realize that building a product is not the same as writing code.
Before, I only asked:
What can I build next?
Now I’m trying to ask:
Will anyone search for this?
Will Google index it?
If it gets impressions, will anyone click?
If they click, will they actually use it?
That shift in thinking has slowed me down a bit. In a good way, I think.
Google is indexing my site very slowly
Right now, Google has indexed 13 pages.
But the site has more than 20 pages in total, and the rest are still waiting to be indexed.
I’ve done the basic things:
- Updated the sitemap
- Resubmitted the important pages
- Checked and verified the sitemap
Still, some pages just sit there without getting indexed.
At first, I wanted to dig into every technical detail.
Is the sitemap broken?
Is something misconfigured?
Am I missing a meta tag?
After checking everything, I didn’t find any obvious problem.
So I’m leaning toward a simpler explanation:
SmartConvert is still a new site, and Google is still figuring it out.
I don’t want to just call it the “Google Sandbox.” That feels too vague. But I do think new sites need time to be discovered, crawled, processed, and evaluated.
There isn’t much I can do except:
Submit what needs to be submitted.
Check what needs to be checked.
And keep watching.
Why I started a blog
This was one of the bigger decisions this week.
Before, SmartConvert was basically:
Find a need → build a tool → launch it
Now I’m testing another path:
User has a problem → searches for it → finds an article → then uses the related tool
For example, someone might not search for:
PDF Compressor
They might search for:
How to compress a PDF
Or:
How to reduce PDF file size
The underlying need is the same. But the search intent is different.
So I want to see if content pages can bring in search traffic that the tool pages don’t.
I have no results yet. I just started.
But it’s worth testing.
The login feature is early groundwork
I also added user login this week.
With my current user numbers, login is not an urgent feature. Almost nobody is asking for it yet.
But if I ever want to add:
- Free usage limits
- Paid plans
- User accounts
- Usage tracking
- History
Then login is the foundation.
So this is me laying groundwork for something that may or may not matter later.
I don’t know when it will become useful. But I’d rather build it before I desperately need it.
I also submitted the site to Bing
Besides Google, I submitted SmartConvert to Bing this week.
There’s no data yet.
So there’s nothing to analyze.
I’ll leave it alone for now and check back later.
Chinese language support
SmartConvert now supports Chinese too.
My main target is still overseas users, but adding another language makes the site more complete.
Will it bring more users?
I don’t know yet.
Build it, then see what the data says.
Maybe it helps. Maybe it doesn’t.
At least I’ll learn something.
The real lesson: indexed does not mean traffic
The biggest thing I’m learning is that getting indexed is only step one.
It means Google has found you.
It does not mean Google trusts you.
It does not mean you rank.
It does not mean people click.
It does not mean people stay.
For a new site, there’s a long chain:
Discovered → crawled → indexed → ranked → shown → clicked → used → retained
Every step has its own delay.
And you can’t skip steps by adding more features.
What I’m doing next
I’m not going to panic and add 20 more tools just because indexing is slow.
I’m not going to give up on the current direction just because I got 1 click this week.
Instead, I’ll keep improving what I already have.
I’ll keep writing blog posts.
I’ll keep watching Search Console.
I’ll keep checking which pages get impressions and which ones get ignored.
And I’ll keep sharing the real numbers, even when they’re small.
Maybe new sites really do need time.
Next week, I’ll check the numbers again.
If you’re also building an indie product or side project, I’d love to hear how you handle the “indexed but no traffic” phase. What worked for you?