Google is doing a great job discovering new websites and content, but sometimes, it’s for your benefit to ask Google to reindex your website or individual pages.
In this post, you’ll learn how and when to ask Google to recrawl your whole site or individual pages.
How To Ask Google To Recrawl Your Website?
The best way to ask Google to reindex your website is to use the request indexing feature of the URL Inspection tool available in Google Search Console. You need to be the website owner or a user with the appropriate rights to use this feature.
Here are the steps to follow:
- Step 1: Add your website to the Google search console.
- Step 2: Click the URL INSPECTION TOOL option from the left menu.
- Step 3: Type your full domain name in the specified area and click ENTER.
- Step 4: Click on the REQUEST INDEXING option.
Once your indexing request is submitted, you'll get a confirmation message.
How To Ask Google To Reindex a Particular Page?
The only way to force Google to recrawl an existing page is to use the URL Inspection tool in Google Search Console.
- Step 1: Log in to the Google Search console.
- Step 2: Click the URL INSPECTION TOOL option from the left menu.
- Step 3: Type the full URL of the individual page in the specified area and click ENTER.
- Step 4: Click on the REQUEST INDEXING button.
Is There a Limit On How Many Times To Request Indexing?
Google has removed any information regarding crawl limits from their documentation, but they have confirmed via Twitter (X) that there are still limits on how many times you can use the request indexing function for the site as a whole or individual pages.
Before removing it, the crawl limits were:
- Asking Crawling of individual URLS: 10 URLS per day.
- Asking site recrawls for 2 site requests per day.
How Long Does It Take For Google To Reindex My Site?
It depends on the case. For content changes, it may take from a few days to a few weeks.
For other changes like structure data, the results are almost immediate. It took just 10 minutes for Google to consider the FAQ-related schema I added to this page.
You can use the URL Inspection tool and Index Coverage reports of Google Search Console to monitor progress.
When Should You Ask Google To Recrawl Your Site?
You do not need to regularly force Google to recrawl and re-index your website. But, there are some cases in which requesting a site recrawling will speed up the process and get your changes in Google’s index faster. The most common reasons are:
Site-Wide Changes - When you make significant changes to a website that affect all pages. For example, changing your website’s URL structure or migrating from http to https is a good idea to request a re-indexing of your website.
Domain Transfer - When changing domains, it’s a good practice to ask Google to crawl both websites so that they can update their index faster.
Re-Branding - You can request a reindex When rebranding your business without necessarily changing domains. In this case, rebranding refers to substantially changing your 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 menu structure are good reasons to use the reindex website function.
After a Content Audit - After a thorough content audit, you most probably have many pages that are removed, changed, or redirected, and this is a valid reason to let Google know instead of waiting for Google crawlers to find out.
Recovering from a Google Penalty (some cases) - When your website is under a Google penalty, the 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 recovered or not.
In some cases, though, requesting a site reindexing speeds up the process. For example, if you are penalized for too many ads (ad-heavy penalty), you can make the necessary changes to comply with recommended practices and ask Google to index your website again.
Doing so does not guarantee that you will be freed from the penalty immediately, but it can speed up the process.
Recommended Reading: Knowing how search engines work will help you understand how the crawling and indexing process works and why asking Google for a recrawl may benefit you.
When Should You Ask Google To Crawl Individual Pages?
Besides 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 of your website are:
Time-Sensitive Posts - When you publish a trending post, you can use the ‘Request Indexing’ feature to get your post indexed faster. For example, breaking news or ‘happening now’ type of articles.
Adding structured data to a post - When you add schema markup to an existing post, you can request Google to re-index the page.
Making significant changes to a page’s content - When you change or update a post's content significantly during a content review, you can ask Google to reindex the post. This will certainly help get the new content in Google’s index faster.
Changing the post title or meta description of an important post - When you change the page title or meta description of a post that already has rankings and gets traffic, you can use the re-indexing feature to inform Google about your changes.
For example, when you change the page title of a popular post to comply with the new standards, you can request a reindex, and you will notice that your search snippets will be updated in a matter of hours.
Note: I’m not suggesting that you should use this feature every time you change a post title or description. Use it wisely and only on important posts.
Key Learnings
Google is excellent at discovering new pages or changing existing pages, but you can speed up this process by using any of the methods described above.
Do not use the above methods every time you publish a new post; instead, use them wisely and when it really matters.
Don’t submit a request indexing for the same page more than once. It won’t make a difference.
