You’ve launched your new website – or you’ve updated your page copy – and you’re waiting for Google to notice all your hard work!
But you’re not going to see your updates reflected in the organic search results just yet.
It might surprise you to learn that Google won’t reindex the changes you make to your content straightaway. In fact, it can take anything from a few days for a few weeks for the search engine to realise you’ve got new information to share. Then, once it’s realised there’s something new to review, it then needs to reassess what’s on each page and decide where to rank it – and even though Google’s algorithm is more advanced than ever before, this takes time.
How does Google’s indexing process work?
Google’s website indexing process involves three important steps: crawling, indexing, and serving.
Crawling refers to the process during which Googlebot (Google’s web crawler) discovers new or updated pages on the web. Googlebot “scans” the content of these pages and uses sitemaps and links from known pages to find new content.
When Googlebot crawls a page, it processes the content so it can better understand its relevance and value. This is known as indexing. Google extracts and indexes several elements from each page, including its content (text, images, videos and other media); metadata (information like title tags, meta descriptions, image alt text, and schema markup), keywords, and any structured data that’s in place.
Google stores all this information in a massive database, where it categorises and ranks pages based on their relevance and importance.
When a user enters a search query, Google’s algorithms determine the most relevant indexed pages to show in the results. It measures each page in its index against a range of factors – more on these in a second! – and once it’s made up its mind, it retrieves these pages and puts them into order, according to what it deems to be more relevant. We experience this ‘order’ as what we see in the organic search engine results.
What affects indexing speed?
There are a few factors that will affect how long it takes for Google to notice and review your website:
- How accessible your website is – and how easily it can be crawled
Google likes to encounter websites that load quickly (on desktop and on mobile devices), because its bots can access and process them much faster. If your platform is well-structured with a clear navigation menu, clean URLs, and well-organised sitemap, this will earn you extra brownie points, too.
- How often your website is updated
Simply put, the more you publish, the faster Google’s crawlers will visit your pages, meaning any changes will be indexed quicker.
- How large your website is
Google assigns a “crawl budget” to websites, based on their importance and size. New sites generally get lower crawl budgets initially. This can be frustrating, but it’s reassuring to know that your site will be considered more of a priority as it grows. (This is another reason to create new content on a regular basis!)
- How popular your website is
Yep, you read that right. Better regarded websites receive preferential treatment, so the indexing game really is something of a popularity contest.
You’ll want to encourage other reputable websites to link back to yours, because this indicates that your site is a trusted source of information. Sharing links to your new website on social media platforms will also help to increase its visibility and attract Google’s attention sooner.
- Whether you can prompt a recrawl using Google Search Console
Submitting your sitemap in Google’s own tool, Google Search Console, can prompt the search engine bots to crawl your site as a priority.
This free platform also has a URL inspection tool that allows you to request indexing for specific pages, which is handy if you have recently updated one or a handful of pages and want to signal this to Google without prompting a complete reindex.
What can you do to get Google to assess your website and its pages faster?
- Add both HTML and XML sitemaps to your website
- Do everything you can to improve your load speeds
- Make sure your pages are optimised for mobile
- Create a navigation menu that’s clear, logical, and easy to digest
- Use the robots.txt file to tell Googlebot which pages you want it to crawl, and which pages can be left out of the index
- Add interesting, high quality content to your website over time, including a mixture of new pages, blog posts, photos, and videos to keep things fresh
- Raise awareness of your website’s pages by sharing your links on social media. This will help to generate backlinks AND boost engagement
- Set up Google Search Console so you can request reindexing when necessary and monitor how your pages are being reviewed and received