Indexed but zero impressions: ten Lullwood pages, one backlink

Lullwood, a free browser horror game, had ten pages indexed by Google and no Search Console impressions for any query containing its name. Crawling, speed and schema were all fine. Google’s URL Inspection tool lists exactly one outside page linking to us, a post we published ourselves.

That is the whole diagnosis. If your own pages are indexed but get zero impressions, the first thing to count is who links to you, not how well Google can read you. The rest of this post is the evidence, the command or API behind each number, and what we do not know. Lullwood is the free browser horror game this site exists for; this is the builder side of it, the same side as our other Lullwood devlog posts.

What did the SEO checklist cover?

We did the things a search checklist tells you to do, and measured each one on 2026-10-28:

  • A sitemap submitted to Search Console. It went from 11 URLs to 18 in a single release, and the live sitemap.xml lists 18.
  • IndexNow pings that run on their own after a deploy that changes a page, and returned HTTP 200 for all 18 URLs on the run after that release.
  • Valid WebSite, Organization, VideoGame and FAQPage JSON-LD on the home page. All four blocks parse.
  • A 0.121 second time to first byte on the home page.
  • HTTP 200 for nine search and AI crawlers (GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Googlebot, Bingbot, Applebot) on /, /robots.txt, /llms.txt and /sitemap.xml.
  • One H1 per page and self-referential absolute canonicals.

What did that buy us in Search Console?

In the 28 days from 2026-09-28 to 2026-10-26, the Search Console API reported 1 click, 14 impressions and an average position of 2.7. By page, the home page had 13 of those impressions and 1 click, and /devlog had the other impression.

Do not read 2.7 as page one. It is an average over 14 impressions, on queries Google will not name. The same API returned no query rows at all, so there is nothing to filter for the word Lullwood, and nothing to confirm that those 14 were for our name.

The URL Inspection API says 10 of the 11 sitemap URLs at that time were “Submitted and indexed”, last crawled between 2026-10-21 and 2026-10-25. The exception was /suggest, a form page that was not yet indexed. After the release that took the sitemap to 18, the seven new URLs were hours old and unindexed when we inspected them, which is expected and not a finding.

Why does an indexed site still get zero impressions?

Indexed but zero impressions is what you get when the search engine has read you and has no reason to rank you. Across all of the pages we inspected, URL Inspection’s referringUrls field listed four distinct pages that link to ours:

  • www.lullwoodgame.com/, our home page
  • www.lullwoodgame.com/credits, our credits page
  • www.lullwoodgame.com/devlog, our devlog index
  • a dev.to cross-post of our scent and wind devlog post, published 2026-10-27 by the Lullwood account on dev.to

Three of four are our own pages, which tells Google how our site is organised and nothing about whether anyone else cares. The external set is one URL, and it is a link we made. This list is what Google reports for the pages we inspected, not a complete backlink audit.

The result that outranks us on the name makes it worse. When we searched for Lullwood on 2026-10-22 and again on 2026-10-26, with a web-search tool and not a logged-in Google results page, the result that ranked for our name was our own GitHub repository, first on 2026-10-26. On 2026-10-28 we fetched that repository page and its website link to www.lullwoodgame.com carries rel="nofollow". The repository does not appear in the referring URLs at all. The page ranking for our name passes us no credit.

The one place we could make a followed link ourselves was the body of a dev.to article. Fetching our published one, its links to www.lullwoodgame.com had no nofollow. Every other venue we measured (a GitHub README, an itch.io game page, the Three.js Discourse) marks outbound links nofollow.

What is the difference between crawlability and authority?

Crawlability is whether a search engine can fetch and understand a page. Authority is whether anyone else vouches for it. A checklist fixes the first, because every item on it is something you control from your own repository. The second needs people you do not control to link to you, so it does not appear on a checklist and cannot be shipped in a release.

The practical rule we took from our own numbers: when Search Console says indexed and the impressions say zero, stop editing the site and start counting referring URLs.

What we are doing next, and what we do not know

As of 2026-10-28 the number of distinct external pages linking to Lullwood is still one. We have not solved this, and this post is not a result.

More dev.to cross-posts of these devlog pages are scheduled, with the canonical set to the page on this site, and each links back to the Lullwood game. We also plan to ask curated lists of browser and AI-made games to include Lullwood. Those lists mark links nofollow too, so we expect them to help readers and answer engines more than rankings.

We will report the referring-URL count again, whatever it is. If it rises and impressions for our name stay at zero, authority is lagging and we keep going. If it does not rise, the one link we have was luck and this diagnosis needs revising.

Where these numbers come from

  • Clicks, impressions, position and per-page figures: Search Console Search Analytics API, 28 days from 2026-09-28 to 2026-10-26.
  • Indexed state, last crawl and referring URLs: Search Console URL Inspection API, run on every URL in the sitemap on 2026-10-28.
  • Sitemap size: curl of the live sitemap.xml, counting <loc> entries, 2026-10-28.
  • TTFB, JSON-LD, canonicals and crawler responses: requests to the live home page and four paths, 2026-10-28.
  • Link attributes: curl of the GitHub repository page and the dev.to article, 2026-10-28.
  • Which page ranks first for our name: a web-search tool on 2026-10-22 and 2026-10-26. Directional, not a logged-in Google results page.

Questions about indexed pages with zero impressions

Can a site be indexed but get zero impressions?

Yes. Indexed means Google has stored the page. An impression needs the page to be shown for a query, and a page with almost no links from other sites rarely wins one. Lullwood had 10 of 11 sitemap URLs indexed and Search Console reported no impressions for any query containing its name.

Does a good sitemap, fast server and valid schema fix zero impressions?

Not on their own. Lullwood had a submitted sitemap, automatic IndexNow pings, a 0.121 second time to first byte, valid JSON-LD and 200 responses for nine search and AI crawlers. Over the 28 days to 2026-10-26 that produced 1 click and 14 impressions. Those checks make a page crawlable. They do not make other sites link to it.

Are links from GitHub and dev.to followed by search engines?

Not equally. We fetched both on 2026-10-28. The website link on the Lullwood GitHub repository page carries rel="nofollow". Links in the body of a dev.to article carried rel="noopener noreferrer" with no nofollow. A nofollow link tells search engines not to pass ranking credit through it.

Does Search Console hide queries with few impressions?

Yes. Search Console leaves out queries too rare to report without identifying searchers. For Lullwood the Search Analytics API returned no query rows at all in the 28 days to 2026-10-26, so the accurate statement is that no reported impression was attributed to a query containing the word Lullwood, not that nobody was ever shown the site.

For the game itself, play Lullwood free in your browser at www.lullwoodgame.com, read how to survive Lullwood, or see who builds it in the Lullwood studio devlog. Common questions are in the Lullwood FAQ.