Google Can’t Find Your Substack (and Neither Can Anyone Else)

I’ve migrated everything—content, email list, the whole operation—from Substack to here. I’m not just reducing my presence on Substack. Not “using it differently.” Just… abandoning the platform entirely.

This isn’t a breakup letter. Substack didn’t wrong me. I’m not mad. But after 3.5 months of active publishing (late June through mid-October), I’ve ended up with little over a hundred subscribers (most my own audience who followed me from Twitter) and some very clear data about what does and doesn’t work on this platform.

Substack’s pitch is enticing: It makes it easy to start a newsletter and helps you build an audience through its “active user base” and discovery features. The first part is true. The second part? Well, let’s talk about that.

The Three Problems That Made This Decision

1. Search Engines Can’t Find You

Substack deliberately prevents new newsletters from being indexed on Google. This isn’t a bug or an oversight—it’s how the platform works. They’ve removed sitemaps for smaller sites, which means it can take many months before Google’s web crawlers even discover your newsletter exists.

I’ve written articles about topics I know well—world building teasers and excerpts from my novels, analysis of current events, constitutional law, AI’s impact on publishing. The kind of content that should show up when people search for those topics. Google doesn’t find them. At all.

You can have the best SEO-optimized title in the world. Doesn’t matter. The walled garden doesn’t have a door for search engines to enter through.

The result: If you write something on Substack, Google doesn’t index it. If Google doesn’t index it, people searching for your topics won’t discover you. Your audience growth from organic search? Zero.

This doesn’t improve with time, either. Whether you’ve been publishing for 3.5 months or 12 months, the fundamental SEO problem remains the same.

2. Social Media Thinks Your Links Are Spam

Twitter/X actively censors Substack links—they don’t show preview cards and they reduce visibility for posts containing Substack URLs. You know those nice preview cards that show a title, image, and description when you share a link? Twitter decided Substack doesn’t deserve them.

This is petty platform warfare, and writers are caught in the crossfire.

Even on platforms that don’t actively block Substack, the preview cards often fail to load properly or look unprofessional. When you share your work and the link appears as a bare URL with no context, people scroll past. When the preview card loads but looks broken, people assume your site is broken.

I’m not trying to build a social media empire. I just want to share articles without them looking like spam. Apparently that’s too much to ask.

3. Platform “Discovery” Is Mostly Theoretical

Here’s where it gets interesting. Substack’s discovery features—the “bestseller” and “rising” categories—only show paid newsletters. There’s a paradox built into the platform: to reach broader audiences through Substack’s discovery, you must paywall content from those audiences.

The platform lacks basic discoverability features like “just published” feeds and comprehensive tagging. Testing shows that strategic tagging doesn’t improve discoverability—one writer found decreased views and traffic after implementing tags.

My data point: over fifteen weeks of active publishing resulted in little over a hundred subscribers. Most of those came from my Twitter followers. Some came from Substack’s platform discovery, but very few. The organic growth from within Substack itself? Exceptionally slow.

Where Substack promised an “active user base” discovering new publications, I found… not much of anything.

What I Tried Before Leaving

I’m not the sharpest knife in the place where they keep the knives, but I’m not a complete idiot either. I didn’t bail at the first sign of difficulty. I tried to make it work:

• Set up Google Search Console (the hoops you jump through to maybe get indexed)
• Manually requested indexing for individual posts
• Optimized SEO titles and descriptions according to Substack’s guidelines
• Used strategic tagging as the “experts” recommended
• Engaged actively on Notes (Substack’s Twitter clone)
• Cross-promoted with other Substack writers

Result: Minimal improvement. These aren’t problems you can solve with better optimization or more engagement. They’re fundamental platform limitations.

Plus their discoverability algorithm sucks. 

The Math That Doesn’t Work

Substack does email delivery well. I’ll give them that. The emails go out reliably, the interface is clean, and it handles the technical infrastructure of email (deliverability, spam compliance, all that boring stuff that matters). They also provide comment infrastructure and handle payment processing if you’re running paid subscriptions.

But here’s the thing: if Substack doesn’t help with SEO (Google can’t find you), doesn’t help with social sharing (preview cards broken or censored), and doesn’t help with platform discovery (algorithm favors paid newsletters over free ones), then what exactly is the platform providing that justifies the limitations?

Email service providers like ConvertKit or Mailchimp cost $15-50/month flat rate. They offer actual features: segmentation, automation, A/B testing, detailed analytics. Substack takes 10% of subscription revenue for email delivery, payment processing, and a broken discovery system.

If you’re running a free newsletter (like I was), you’re getting email delivery for free, but still getting zero help with growth. If you’re running paid subscriptions, the 10% covers payment processing—fair enough—but you’re still getting zero help with growth. You’re still invisible to search engines. Your social shares still look broken. The platform discovery still doesn’t work.

If I’m driving 100% of my own traffic anyway—bringing readers from Twitter, from my own marketing, definitely not from search engines—then why am I accepting platform limitations that actively prevent growth?

The answer turned out to be: I shouldn’t be.

What Independence Actually Provides

Moving back to my WordPress blog with a dedicated email service provider gives me:

For SEO: Proper sitemaps that search engines can actually crawl. Full control over meta tags, structured data, schema markup. Articles that appear in Google searches when people look for topics I write about. You know, the basic stuff that every website has had since 1995.

For social sharing: Preview cards that work on every platform. No censorship because Twitter can’t block my domain without blocking the entire internet. Professional presentation when links are shared.

For email: Advanced features like segmentation (different content for different readers), automation sequences, and real analytics beyond “opened” or “didn’t open.” All for a flat monthly fee instead of a percentage of revenue.

For growth: Organic search traffic from Google. Professional social sharing. Full control over every aspect of discovery. Not dependent on a platform’s dysfunctional discovery features.

The initial setup was more work. I won’t pretend it wasn’t. If you’re not technically inclined, this route requires either learning curve or hiring help. For some writers, especially those just starting out, Substack’s ease of use is worth the trade-offs. For me, it stopped being worth it when the limitations became the main story.

But now the foundation is mine, and the limitations aren’t baked into someone else’s business model.

For Readers: What Changes

Basically? Nothing. If you were subscribed on Substack, you’ve already been migrated here. Same content delivered to your inbox. Same writing, same topics, same questionable sense of humor. Just better infrastructure underneath.

The website experience is better too—search actually works, posts are organized by category, archives are navigable, and social shares don’t look like spam.

If you prefer RSS feeds, I’ve got one of those too.

The Lesson (And Your Mileage May Vary)

Substack isn’t evil. It’s not a scam. It works for some writers, especially those who bring existing audiences or who prioritize ease of use over growth potential. Email delivery is solid. The comment system works well. Payment processing is seamless if you’re running paid subscriptions. The barrier to entry is genuinely low. In the end there’s no perfect platform.

But my reality after fifteen weeks: little over a hundred subscribers, most from my existing Twitter followers, minimal organic growth within Substack itself, SEO completely blocked, social sharing broken or censored. The platform promised audience building as a feature and delivered it as barely functional.

Your experience may differ. Maybe you’ve had better results with platform discovery. Maybe your niche gets more Substack visibility. Maybe you brought an existing audience that makes the limitations irrelevant. Maybe you’re okay with the SEO/social trade-offs because the ease of use is worth it. Maybe the trade-offs work differently for your situation.

I’m genuinely curious: Has Substack’s platform discovery worked for you? Do you get meaningful organic growth from within Substack? Have you found workarounds for the SEO limitations? Is your experience better? Worse? Different?

Drop a comment. I’m interested in hearing whether this matches your experience or whether I’m just doing it wrong.

My Substack will remain up for archives, but new content lives here now.