Google is doing a great job of discovering new websites and content, but sometimes it’s to your advantage to force Google to crawl your website, either as a whole or on individual pages.
In this post, you’ll learn when and how to ask Google to recrawl your entire site or individual pages.
When to ask Google to crawl your site again?
Forcing Google to re-crawl and re-index your website is not something you should do on a regular basis. However, there are some cases where requesting a site to be recrawled will speed up the process and get your changes into Google’s index faster.
Site-wide changes
When you make significant changes to a website that affect all pages. For example, changing the URL structure of your website or migrate from http to https It is a good idea to request a reindexing of your website.
Domain transfer
When changing domains, it’s a good practice to ask Google to crawl both websites so they can update their index faster.
rebrand
When you rebrand your business, without necessarily changing domains, you can request a reindexing. In this case, rebranding refers to substantially changing page titles, site structure, and URLs.
After a website redesign
Major site redesigns that involve changing themes, removing or adding JavaScript/html code, or substantial changes to the menu structure are a good reason to use the website reindexing feature.
After a content audit
After a thorough content audit, you most likely have multiple pages being removed, changed or redirected and this is a valid reason to report it to Google instead of waiting for Google’s crawlers to find out.
Recovery from a Google penalty (some cases)
When your website is penalized by Googlethe normal course of action is to make the necessary changes and submit a reconsideration request (in case of manual penalties) or wait for the next update (in case of algorithmic penalties), to find out if your site has recovered or not.
However, there are some cases where requesting a site to be reindexed speeds up the process.
For example, if you receive a penalty for too many ads (heavy ads penalty), you can make the necessary changes to comply with best practices and ask Google to re-index your website.
Doing so does not guarantee that you will be cleared of the penalty immediately, but it may speed up the process.
Recommended reading: Know how search engines work It will help you understand how the crawling and indexing process works and why asking Google to crawl again may be beneficial to you.
When to ask Google to crawl individual pages again?
In addition to asking Google to recrawl ALL your URLs, you can force a recrawl of individual pages.
Valid cases where you can ask Google to recrawl individual pages on your website are:
Time sensitive posts
When you publish a post that is trending right now, you can use the ‘Request Indexing’ feature to get your post indexed faster. For example, breaking news or ‘happening now’ articles.
Add structured data to a post
when you add outline markup to an existing post, you can ask Google to reindex the page.
For example, after adding FAQ schema markup to some of my posts and requesting indexing, the page was reindexed with the new information in less than 30 minutes.
Make significant changes to the content of a page
When during a content review you significantly change or update the content of a post, you can ask Google to re-index the particular post. This will certainly help new content appear in the Google index faster.
Change the post title or meta description of a major post
When you change the page title or meta description of a post that already has rankings and is getting traffic, you can use the reindexing feature to let Google know about your changes.
For example, when you change the meta description length from a popular post to meet the new standards, you can request a reindex and you’ll notice that your search snippets will be updated within hours.
Note: I’m not suggesting that you should use this feature every time you change a post’s title or description. Use it wisely and only on important posts because, as you’ll read below, there are limits to the number of times you can force Google to re-index a page.
How to ask Google to re-index my website?
The best way to ask Google to re-index your website is by using the URL inspection tool, available in Google Search Console.
If for some reason you don’t have a Google Search Console account, you can use the second method below.
Method 1: URL Inspection Tool
Step 1: The first step is add your website to google search console. Among other features, you will get access to the URL inspection tool.
Step 2 – Click on the URL INSPECTION TOOL option on the left menu
Force Google to recrawl the website using the URL inspection tool.
Step 3: Type your FQDN in the specified area and click ENTER
Step 4: Click on the REQUEST INDEXING option.
Request indexing – Google Search Console
Method 2: ping tool
Step 1 – Open a new browser window and paste the following URL: into the sitemap file’
Be sure to replace ‘path to sitemap file’ with the full URL of your sitemap.
For example:
Once submitted, you will receive a ‘sitemap received notification’.
Sitemap notification received
Recommended reading: How to Optimize Your XML Sitemap for SEO.
How to ask Google to re-index a particular page?
The best and only way to force Google to recrawl an existing page is to use the URL inspection tool, available in Google Search Console.
Step 1: Sign in to Google Search Console
Step 2 – Click on the URL INSPECTION TOOL option on the left menu
Force Google to recrawl a single page with the URL inspection tool.
Step 3 – Type the full URL of the individual space in the specified area and click ENTER
Step 4: Click the REQUEST INDEXING button.
Request indexing – Google Search Console
Is there a limit to the number of times indexing can be requested?
Google removed any information about crawl limits from their documentation, but they did confirm via Twitter that there are still limits on how many times you can use the request indexing feature for the site as a whole or for individual pages.
Before removing it, the trace limits where:
- Individual URL Crawl Request: 10 URLs per day.
- Request new site crawls: 2 site requests per day.
How long will it take for Google to re-index my page or site?
It depends on the case. For content changes, it can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks.
For data structure related changes, the results are almost immediate. It took only 10 minutes for Google to take into account the outline related to the FAQ I added to this page.
You can use Google Search Console’s URL inspection tool and index coverage reports to monitor progress.
Key learnings
Google is very good at discovering new pages or changes to existing pages, but you have the opportunity to speed up this process by using any of the methods described above.
Don’t use the above methods every time you publish a new post, but use them wisely and when it really matters.
Don’t submit an indexing request for the same page more than once, it won’t make a difference.
The time it takes for Google to crawl your website again depends on the type of changes you’ve made. In some cases, you can get an updated version of your page in Google’s index in less than 30 minutes.
*Top image source