How to get Google to index your site
·4 min read
To get Google to index your site, verify it in Google Search Console, submit your XML sitemap there, and use URL Inspection to request indexing for your most important pages. Then link every new page from pages Google has already indexed, and make sure no robots.txt rule or noindex tag is turning Googlebot away. Google says crawling can take a few days to a few weeks, and nothing you submit guarantees a page gets indexed.
Most sites get found without any of this. Google's SEO starter guide says it finds most pages through links from pages it already crawled. The steps below shorten the wait and show what went wrong when it drags on.
Verify your site and submit your sitemap to Google
Search Console is where you talk to Google about your site, so set it up first.
- Add a Domain property for
example.com. It covers http and https, www and every subdomain, and it asks you to add a TXT record at your DNS host. - Click Verify once the record propagates. Without DNS access, use a URL-prefix property verified with an HTML tag.
- Open Indexing > Sitemaps, enter the sitemap URL, such as
https://example.com/sitemap.xml, and click Submit. - Come back a day later. A status of Success with a count of discovered pages means Google read the file.
To submit your site to Google, that sitemap is all there is. The old google.com/ping?sitemap= endpoint was retired in 2023 and returns 404, so any plugin still pinging it does nothing. Also list the sitemap in robots.txt so every crawler finds it, as covered in adding your sitemap to robots.txt.
Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xmlIf the report shows errors or a "Couldn't fetch" status, our guide to validating an XML sitemap walks through each one.
Request indexing for your key pages
Paste a URL into the inspection bar at the top of Search Console, then click Request indexing.
Spend these requests carefully. Google's page on asking Google to recrawl says individual submissions have a quota, asking twice for the same URL won't speed it up, and a request doesn't guarantee the page will be indexed at all. It also says to submit a sitemap when you have large numbers of URLs. Request your home page and main service pages, and let the sitemap carry the rest.
Skip the Indexing API. Google limits it to job postings and livestream pages, and using it for a blog or store breaks its usage rules.
Link new pages from pages Google already indexed
An internal link from an indexed page is the strongest discovery signal you control. Googlebot recrawls your home page and main category pages often, and it follows the links it finds there.
A new blog post that sits only in the sitemap and a paginated archive can wait weeks. The same post linked from the home page and from two related articles usually gets crawled much sooner.
For a brand new domain, one link from a site Google already crawls, such as a client, a supplier or a business directory, gets the first visit started. Don't buy links for this.
Make sure nothing blocks Google from indexing it
Requests and sitemaps do nothing if the page tells Google to stay away.
| Block | Where to look | Search Console label |
|---|---|---|
| robots.txt Disallow | example.com/robots.txt |
URL blocked by robots.txt |
| noindex tag or header | Page head and X-Robots-Tag response header |
URL marked 'noindex' |
| Canonical to another URL | <link rel="canonical"> |
Alternate page with proper canonical tag |
| Login, 401 or 403 | Staging password or firewall rule | Blocked due to unauthorized request (401) |
| Server error | Hosting logs | Server error (5xx) |
The staging leftovers cause most of these. A Disallow: / or a sitewide noindex shipped at launch will keep a finished site out for months. The fixes for each are in why your website isn't showing up on Google and fixing "Blocked by robots.txt".
Then check quality. Google indexes fewer pages than it crawls, and it skips thin, duplicate and auto-generated pages. Ten near-identical city pages with a swapped place name will mostly stay out however often you request them.
How long does it take Google to index a site?
Google's recrawl guide says crawling can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. A new domain with no links sits at the slow end.
If URL Inspection shows Discovered - currently not indexed, Google knows the URL and hasn't crawled it yet. That usually points to weak internal linking or low-value pages, and our post on discovered, currently not indexed covers the fixes. Crawled - currently not indexed means Google read the page and chose to leave it out, which is a content problem, not a submission problem.
Submit your site to Bing and other engines
Google does not support IndexNow, so everything above is your whole Google toolkit. Bing, Yandex, Naver, Seznam and the other engines listed on indexnow.org do support it, and one submission is shared with all of them.
Our IndexNow Checker & Submitter handles that side. Without a key, it generates one and tells you the file to serve at your site root. With a key, it fetches your key file and checks that it holds exactly the key, then flags a missing file, wrong contents, a redirect or a content type other than text/plain. When the file is valid, it submits up to 100 URLs on the same host to api.indexnow.org in one request and reports whether the submission was accepted, rejected or throttled. URLs from another host or outside the key file's folder are listed as not submitted.
It does not submit anything to Google, and an accepted submission doesn't guarantee crawling or indexing. A run costs 5 credits.