Website Launch Checklist 2026: What to Check Before, During and After You Go Live

#How to use this checklist

This checklist is for founders launching a product, SaaS or small business site, not for an agency QA team. It has three phases: before you go live, launch day, and the first 30 days.

Every item has a reason and a quick way to check it. Items in bold are the ones that silently stop a site from being found at all. If you only have an hour, do those.

#Phase 1: Before you go live

Deploy to production a few days before you tell anyone. Most of these checks only work on the real domain.

#Domain, HTTPS and redirects

#Titles, descriptions and link previews

The minimum head for a homepage (use absolute URLs):

<title>Example: invoice reminders for freelancers</title>
<meta name="description" content="Example sends polite, automatic reminders when a client pays late, so you stop chasing invoices by hand.">
<link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/">
<meta property="og:title" content="Example: invoice reminders for freelancers">
<meta property="og:type" content="website">
<meta property="og:url" content="https://example.com/">
<meta property="og:image" content="https://example.com/og.png">
<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image">

#Crawling and indexing

A sensible starting robots.txt for a product site:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /app/
Disallow: /api/

Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml

#Structured data

Structured data (Google recommends JSON-LD) tells search engines what a page is. Correct markup makes you eligible for rich results; it doesn't guarantee them. Two types cover most launches:

• WebSite on the homepage, with name and url. Google calls it the most important signal for specifying the site name shown in results.
• Organization on the homepage or about page, with name, URL and logo. Google says it helps disambiguate your organization, including which logo to show.

<script type="application/ld+json">
{"@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "WebSite", "name": "Example", "url": "https://example.com/"}
</script>

Add SoftwareApplication, Product or Article only on pages that really are those things, and validate with Google's Rich Results Test.

#Speed, Core Web Vitals and mobile

#Analytics, forms and email

#Legal and trust pages

This is a checklist, not legal advice. If you handle sensitive data, get your policies reviewed properly.

#AI crawler access and llms.txt

To stay in ChatGPT search while opting out of OpenAI's training:

User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /

User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /

The full breakdown of every AI crawler is in can AI crawlers read your website.

#Check most of Phase 1 in one pass

A free Verdy audit reads your homepage, crawls about a dozen of your pages, and checks titles, meta descriptions, headings, canonical tags, the sitemap, robots.txt, structured data, Open Graph and X cards, speed through PageSpeed Insights, AI crawler access and llms.txt, with a severity for every finding. It won't test your forms, email deliverability, legal pages or analytics, and it doesn't crawl thousands of pages, so those stay on your list. The quick tools need no signup.

#Phase 2: Launch day

Launch day is the day you tell people, not the day you deploy.

#What to prepare the week before

#Where to announce

Don't do all of these on the same day. Pick one or two anchor launches and spread the rest over the following weeks, with copy written for each audience. Verdy's launch console ranks about 150 curated places by fit for your product and drafts the copy for each.

#On the day

• Answer every comment quickly for the first few hours on each platform.
• Watch your error logs and signup flow, not just the vote count. A broken signup costs more than a low rank.
• Write down every piece of feedback. Often the most useful output of a launch is a list of fixes.
• Don't ask for upvotes. Product Hunt's help center says "Please don't" and warns it can drop you in the ranks or off the homepage.

#Phase 3: The first 30 days

If your pages still aren't in Google after a few weeks, work through why a new website isn't showing up on Google. For turning launch week into steady traffic, see how to get your first 100 website visitors.

#Common launch mistakes

1. Shipping staging settings: a noindex tag, Disallow: /, or staging URLs in canonicals and the sitemap.
2. Blocking the wrong AI bot. Blocking GPTBot is a training choice. Blocking OAI-SearchBot takes you out of ChatGPT search answers.
3. A blank link preview because og:image is missing or relative.
4. Launching everywhere on one day with the same copy. You can't reply properly in five places at once, and a Hacker News post reads wrong on Product Hunt.
5. Measuring votes instead of signups. Votes fade in a day; signups and conversations stay.
6. Expecting Google traffic in week one. Google's starter guide says some changes take effect in hours and others take several months.

#FAQ

#What should I check before launching a website?

Check that search engines can crawl and index it (no noindex, a sensible robots.txt, an XML sitemap, correct canonicals) on HTTPS and one domain version. Give every page a unique title, make sure link previews work, test every form and email on a phone, and confirm analytics records your visit.

#How long does it take Google to index a new website?

Google says crawling can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, and that requesting a crawl doesn't guarantee inclusion. Submitting a sitemap and inspecting your homepage in Search Console helps Google discover the site, and links from other sites help it find you faster.

#Should I block AI crawlers on my new website?

Only block what you mean to. Training crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended) are separate from search crawlers (OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot, PerplexityBot). Blocking GPTBot doesn't remove you from ChatGPT search and Google-Extended doesn't affect Google Search, so you can opt out of training and still appear in AI answers.

#Do I need an llms.txt file?

No. It's an optional proposal, and Google says AI Overviews and AI Mode need no special files. It can help AI agents find your key pages, and Chrome's Lighthouse checks it when present, so if you publish one, keep it short and accurate.

#What legal pages does a new website need?

At minimum, a privacy policy if you collect any personal data, including analytics and email signups. If you sell, add terms, clear refund and cancellation policies and contact details, which Stripe's website checklist also asks for. Cookie consent rules depend on where your visitors are, so check the ones that apply to you.

#Should I launch on Product Hunt on day one?

Only if the product is usable without friction and you can spend the whole day in the comments. It's often better to launch quietly, fix what early users find, and go to Product Hunt a few weeks later with a sharper page. Product Hunt says you can resubmit after six months, but a rushed first launch is still a wasted shot.

#Final recommendation

Do the bold items first: HTTPS on one host, no noindex, a clean robots.txt, Open Graph tags, analytics, tested forms, OAI-SearchBot allowed, and Search Console with a sitemap. Those decide whether anyone can find you at all. Everything else improves how well you show up once they can.

Then treat launch as a month, not a day: one or two anchor launches, directories and communities spread over the following weeks, a few earned backlinks, and a weekly look at what Google has indexed.