How does Google indexing work? Guide to getting indexed, how long it takes, Search Console & more…

What is Google indexing and how can I get all my pages indexed by the famous search engine? That’s what you’ll learn in this article, followed by 2 complete SEO guides ↓ which will tell you everything you need to know about Google indexing!

Let’s start by (re)looking at the basics of Google indexing, essential if you’re SEO beginner …

Definition: What is indexing on Google and other search engines?

Google and other search engine indexing is the process where crawling robots search (Crawlers), analyze, and list website content in their “index,” before even ranking their pages to display in “SERPs” (Search Engine Result Pages – or search results).

Indexing is therefore an essential step in natural search engine optimization on Google and other search engines, even before you can hope to obtain a good ranking for your site and content in search results.

To be correctly indexed, the first thing to check is that the site has no factors blocking indexing. Then, to encourage indexing, you need to optimize everything that can be technically optimized, and win Google’s trust by producing content that is useful to web users.

How does Google indexing work?

To index the pages of a website and offer relevant results to users, Google asks its “Googlebot” crawler to crawl the Web, following the links to each piece of content, in order to analyze them, index them (if necessary), and rank them in more or less good position.

The search engine allocates a “crawl budget” to each site, based on various criteria such as content quality, site update frequency, page depth, server performance, site trust or authority, and other criteria as secret as the recipe for Coca-Cola.

The crawl budget allocated by Google for each site enables a certain number of pages to be crawled and indexed for a given period of time (daily, weekly or monthly). If the crawl budget is exhausted, for example when a site has published a very large number of pages of no interest to Google, the crawler may decide to stop browsing the site and return later, when a new crawl budget is allocated.

Below, we present the basics of Google indexing, but bear in mind that there are dozens of equally subtle criteria for determining which content will be crawled/indexed and within what timeframe.

How do I ask Google to crawl one or more URLs?

If your site has earned Google’s trust by demonstrating a certain authority in its field, and by regularly publishing good content, your pages should index themselves, without any intervention on your part, thanks to Googlebot regularly scanning your internal links.

1. Pings sent automatically to Google (slow, but automatic)

When using a modern CMS like WordPress or a blogging platform like Blogger, for example, content is supposed to be sent to Google for indexing thanks to a “Ping” system. To understand how pings work, see our Pingomatic ↓ test below.
Ping ‘s services are designed to inform search engines like Google when new content is published.

To complete your list of WordPress ping services, feel free to copy and paste the list of ping services published below ↓

Integrating ping services into your WordPress site can help speed up the indexing of your new content. However, since Google receives so many Pings from all WordPress users, among others, this system isn’t always the fastest and most reliable way of informing Google of the publication or modification of a piece of content. It may therefore be necessary to ask Google to crawl or re- crawl your page(s) using one of the methods below.

2. Google Search Console URL inspection tool (about 10 pages per hour)

The most effective method for requesting the exploration of individual URLs is undoubtedly Google’sURL inspection tool.

Of course, this tool only works for your own content hosted on your own sites, as to access it, you’ll need to register your domain name in Search Console, from your Google account.

Note that this tool allows you to request the indexing or updating of only about 10 pages over a short period of time (about 10 pages every hour). To show a large number of pages to Google, it will be necessary to use the following method, which consists of sending a ” Sitemap “. In other words, a “site map” in XML format.

3. Submitting a Sitemap / XML sitemap to Search Console (bulk URL import)

To facilitate the indexing of any website, Google recommends submitting an XML Sitemap, which is particularly useful if your site has a large amount of content that needs to be indexed.

Visit XML sitemaps are important files for your SEO, as they save Google a considerable amount of time in discovering and exploring your content, both old and new.

With WordPress, for example, you automatically have an XML Sitemap that you can access at example.com/sitemap.xml.
To benefit from an advanced and better optimized Sitemap, you can install an SEO plugin such as Yoast or another.

Then, to submit your Sitemap to Google Search Console, go to the Sitemaps tab and enter the URI of your XML sitemap… usually “sitemap.xml”, as illustrated below.

XML Sitemaps are useful in a number of cases, such as site migration or a massive change in URL format, where redirects need to be implemented quickly.

As mentioned above, some plugins such as Yoast SEO for WordPress can also include additional metadata in the Sitemap, such as page language, page priority, number of images included, publication or update date, as well as any other information useful for indexing content on Google Images, Google Videos, Google News and, of course, Google Search.

4. Creating internal and external links (the basis of SEO)

Google’s robot regularly examines the pages of the sites in its index, in order to keep its database up to date and discover new content to index.

To do this, Googlebot follows the links present in the content it explores. These can be external links, pointing from site A to site B (not forgetting links from social networks: Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.).
But they can also be internal links between pages on the same site with related subjects. This is known as “internal meshing”.

This meshing is essential if you want Google to index your new content, since the principle of the crawler (Googlebot) is to scour the Web in search of new links to explore. In other words, even if your content is included in your XML Sitemap, content that receives no internal links will be harder for Google to index than a page that receives many natural links to it.

How long should I wait for my content to be indexed on Google?

Exploring new content can take days or even weeks, especially for low-quality content and/or sites that haven’t yet managed to earn Google’s trust rank.

To finally see a recalcitrant page indexed by Google, it’s often enough to be patient, while continuing to share your content with others. However, if after more than 4 weeks, one of your contents is still not present on Google, it may be necessary to improve it (modify and add content), as well as create new ones. New Links to it, from related content on your site, and if possible, from external sites.

Is Google indexing guaranteed for all content?

Google is quite clear on this point… there is no guarantee that a website and/or content will actually be indexed in its search engine.

When it comes to indexing results, Google favors original, useful content from reliable sources. That’s why it’s important to ensure the quality of your content and the reputation of your site, to maximize your chances of being indexed.

Indeed, it’s now very common for a lot of a site’s content never to be indexed. For example, this is often the case when the site has lost Google’s trust through the publication of a lot of useless or poor-quality content; when there is too little engagement with the content; or when there is a lack of ” Internal linking “to the relevant content.

If your site and your content are truly worthy of interest, it is your duty to let Google know by continuing to promote them via ” Internal linking “and External links “Not forgetting network shares, email shares, etc. It’s also important to keep improving your site, adding new content and regular updates.

How to check the indexing of a site and content on Google?

1. The “site:” command

To display the list of pages on a site that are indexed on Google, one method is to use the command ” site: ” followed by the domain name of the site concerned.

For example, to see the list of indexed pages for the domain ” EasyHoster.com “follow this link, which will open a Google search with the query site:easyhoster.com ➚

2. Google Search Console

The second method consists of verifying the page’s indexing by inspecting it using the URL Inspection Tool in Google Search Console.

To check the indexing of a page via Search Console, log in to your Google account and go to https://search.google.com/search-console ➚

If this is your first connection, you’ll need to validate ownership of the domain name you wish to analyze. To do this, in the console, click on the drop-down list (Property selector at top left) > Add property, which will take you to a page where you can enter your domain name.

Once the domain name has been entered, Google Search Console offers a number of verification methods, such as verifying by HTML tag, uploading HTML files, linking to your Google Analytics property or adding a DNS zone record.

Once you’ve chosen the method and set it up on your site to prove to Google that you are the site owner, you’ll be able to access all the Google Search Console features associated with this domain, including Google indexing verification via the page indexing tab, and the URL inspection tool.

In fact, via Indexation > Pages, you can see all the pages that have been indexed by Google, as well as pages that have been detected via a Sitemap or pages that have been crawled but are currently not indexed.
Similarly, you can use the top search bar to analyze any URL on your site to quickly check whether the page is considered indexed by Google, and if so, obtain information on the page’s non-indexation (such as the exclusion of any robots=noindex or the robots.txt file).

Solve the most common indexing problems

Before embarking on very advanced optimization actions, it’s first necessary to check that you haven’t configured any tags or parameters that could block indexing.

1. Check robots tag for noindex

The URL inspection tool gives you numerous indications of the indexability of your pages, such as “Authorized Exploration” and “Authorized Indexing”.

This information is vital, as your pages may not be crawlable or indexable due to the presence of a parameter in the robots.txt file or the robots tag set to noindex.

2. Check your HTTP header for X-Robots-Tag: noindex

When a page seems impossible to index, it’s also important to check your “HTTP Headers” to make sure there are no ” X-Robots-Tag ” tags preventing indexing via your site’s header. This can be checked with an online HTTP Header analysis tool such as HttpStatus.io . In the case of a X-Robots-Tag: noindex header, you’ll need to find the source and remove it to allow Google to index the page.

3. Check the canonical tag for a bad URL

The canonical ” rel=canonical ” tag allows site editors to signal to Google whether this is the main URL of the page to be indexed, or whether another “favorite” URL should be favored.

If the page doesn’t have a canonical tag, or if it matches your URL, Googlebot should index your page as normal.

However, if you have mistakenly entered the wrong URL in the rel=canonical tag, Google may well avoid indexing your page, in favor of the URL entered in the canonical tag.

4. Check robots.txt for URL blocking

The robots.txt file gives instructions to Crawlers like those of search engines such as Googlebot (or Bingbot, Microsoft’s crawler).

The ” robots.txt ” may mention a list of URLs that may or may not be crawled by a particular crawler. For example, you can explicitly ask Googlebot not to crawl a specific set of URLs, while allowing other robots to crawl them. This can be useful, for example, to save your Crawl Budget, so that your daily and monthly Google crawling quota isn’t wasted on analyzing secondary pages.

As you will have understood, an error in the directives entered in the robots.txt file can clearly prevent Google from crawling and indexing certain pages. This is a key point to check if you want Googlebot to be able to crawl your content.

5. Create internal and external links to your content

Google’s robots are designed to crawl the Web following Hypertext Links.
Internal and external links therefore enable the Googlebot to find and index content in its index, provided that Google judges your site to be trustworthy and your content to be of high quality.

By creating more and more relevant links to your most important web pages, both from your domain name (internal links) and from other domain names (external links), you’ll help Googlebot to discover, explore and eventually index your content, as well as to understand which content is important, and which is not.
In fact, the more important a piece of content is to you, the more links (internal and/or external) it should receive, from your important pages, such as your home page, your most popular articles or in any case, requiring less than 3 clicks from your homepage.
At the same time, these links make it easier for users and robots alike to discover your content. Especially the most important ones. That’s why link building is a good way of letting Google know that content must be indexed.

Moreover, the existence of several inbound links to your content should also help improve its ranking in the results (SERPs), since links are always part of the ranking criteria of Google’s algorithm… provided they are relevant links that make sense to users.

6. Correct content and/or add useful information

If after 4 weeks, one of your pages still hasn’t been indexed by Google, it’s important to take a step back and reassess your content. It may be necessary to check that the content is free of grammatical errors, spelling mistakes and low-quality portions of text, and that all the information provided is relevant and useful to the reader.

Similarly, each page should include a sufficient amount of content to meet users’ needs.

In addition, you may need to add more useful and up-to-date information that will make your page even more valuable to readers.

Once you’ve re-evaluated and revised your content, try resubmitting it to Google via its Search Console and wait up to another 4 weeks to see if it’s indexed by Google.

7. Correct technical errors on your site

Getting good results on PageSpeed Insights ensures that a site is properly optimized and less likely to encounter Google indexing problems, such as pages that are Detected, currently unindexed which proves that Google knows your URLs, but doesn’t currently want to crawl them (cf. Predictive Crawling ).

It is important to ensure that all scores are in the Green on PageSpeed Insights… and not just the Performance but also the Accessibility, Best Practices and SEO scores, as this will show Google that you’re taking good care of your site.

If your site has too many technical problems, such as long loading times and a Red on mobile, Google could considerably slow down the crawling frequency of its Googlebot crawler, and prevent your pages from being indexed.

In our experience, following optimization best practices has a significant impact on resolving Google indexing issues, as well as on User Experience. This translates into better natural referencing throughout the site.

How to avoid being indexed by Google?

To prevent Google from indexing certain content, for example, to save your Crawl Budget, or to prevent visitors from landing on private and confidential content, simply apply the reverse of the principles seen above. This means, for example, using a meta tag robots=noindex, a header HTTP X-Robots-Tag:noindex, judicious use of tags rel=canonical, as well as the robots.txt file with the instruction Disallow: followed by the URI for which crawling should be prohibited.

To prevent a complete WordPress site from being indexed by Google, your CMS has an easy-to-activate setting from your Dashboard > Settings > Reading, as illustrated below.

Summary table of Google indexing best practices

Let’s very briefly summarize the principles seen in this article on Google indexing in the form of an SEO tips table.

Principle of Google indexing	SEO tips
Crawl	Googlebot crawls the web by following links to discover new pages and update them.
XML Sitemap	Creating an XML sitemap and submitting it to Google via Search Console makes life easier for Googlebot and helps improve Google indexing.
Pings (from WordPress, etc)	When you post new content or update a page, your CMS can send a "ping" to report it to Google.
Search Console	Google provides webmasters with an interface allowing them to send the URLs of their site for indexing.
Indexing	Once the pages have been crawled, Google stores them on its index servers and positions them more or less well in the results (SERPs) depending on their content and their keywords.
SEO	SEO consists in particular of optimizing web pages so that they are better positioned in search results.
Quality Content	Content optimization consists in improving the information given so that the pages are better positioned in the search results.
Backlinks	Relevant inbound links/backlinks from quality sites improve a site's reputation and indexing.
Accessibility	An accessible, well-structured and mobile-friendly site facilitates indexing by Google (check via PageSpeed ​​Insights).
Page's Performance	Fast loading speed improves user experience and promotes better indexing (verify via PageSpeed ​​Insights).
Web hosting provider	Choosing a Web Hosting solution with a low availability rate (Uptime) and regularly creating errors, can cause Googlebot to crawl and index fewer pages.
Regular updates	Regularly updating the content of a site helps maintain a good frequency of exploration, a good Google indexing rate, as well as its visibility on the engine.
Indexing delay	The indexing time can vary (between 6 hours and 4 weeks) depending on the optimization of your site, the trust that Google places in it, as well as the average quality of your previous content.
Check indexing	The "site:" command and the Google Search Console are the most reliable tools to check if a page is indexed on Google.
Discourage Google Indexing	To prevent Google from indexing content, it is possible to use the robots=noindex tag, the X-Robots-Tag:noindex header, the rel=canonical tag and/or the robots.txt file. WordPress offers a setting in its “Reading” category to discourage engines from indexing a site.

Google indexing FAQs

Finally, let’s answer some of the most frequently asked questions about Google indexing.

Why has Google indexing become so slow or difficult, and how can you force it in 18 steps?

For ecological reasons, and since late 2020, Google has changed its browsing habits and therefore its indexing times, with the aim of reducing its carbon footprint.

To this end, it has introduced a new ” prediction ” algorithm designed to ” guess ” which pages are worth exploring, and then indexing… or not. It’s called ” Predictive Crawling “.

This new Google indexing system created a small tidal wave in the SEO community in 2021, and now requires a perfectly optimized site (PageSpeed, etc.), high-quality content (cf. Helpful Content), and a Crawl Budget that avoids crawling unnecessary pages.

To learn more about “Predictive Crawling” and find solutions to indexing problems, don’t miss these 2 dedicated articles: