Demystifying Google Indexing: How Long Does it Really Take?

The time it takes for Google to index your website can be a major source of frustration for SEOs and website owners alike. You've put your heart and soul into creating an amazing website, posting highly informative articles, and following SEO best practices to give your pages a chance to rank in Google. But how long will it take for your hard work to show up in the search results?

Earlier this year, Google made the startling announcement that they had completely revamped the way their search engine thinks about, finds, and ranks content. This overhaul resulted in a new AI-powered search experience called Google Search Generative Experience (SGE). With this major change, many were left wondering if and how the indexing process was affected.

So how long does it actually take for Google to index your website after you hit "publish"? And is there anything you can do to speed things up? Keep reading to find out.

What is Indexing and Why Does it Matter?

Indexing is the process of saving and organizing selected information from across the web in Google's database—the "index"--for it to be quickly retrieved later. Each search query that a user enters in Google is answered using millions (if not billions) of relevant documents from this index.

For your pages to show up in the search results when someone searches for related topics, they first need to be indexed by Google. If your pages aren't indexed, they're essentially invisible in the search results and you won't get any traffic from them.

But even though indexing is a requirement for ranking in Google, it isn't the actual ranking process itself. Just because a page is indexed doesn't mean it will rank well (or at all). The search engine's ranking abilities are powered by a complex mixture of algorithms and AI models that evaluate and compare indexed pages to determine which ones should be ranked highest for every search query.

Crawling vs. Indexing: Understanding the Difference

Before we dive into the nitty-gritty details of the Google indexing timeline, we need to understand the two processes that make up search engine "population": crawling and indexing.

Crawling is the first step in the population process and involves Googlebot discovering publicly available URLs across the web. The URLs it finds can belong to any website--big or small--but they must be accessible to be "seen" by Googlebot.

Once Googlebot has located a URL, it will render the page much like a regular user and then take note of the content, images, links, and other data on the page. After this, the URL moves on to the next stage: indexing.

Google only indexes a small percentage of the pages it crawls. In fact, Google's chief economist has previously stated that around 15% of URLs are indexed (although this number might vary depending on the website). This is because not every page meets the quality requirements set by Google's algorithms and AI models, and many duplicate, low-quality, or spammy pages are filtered out during indexing.

Crawling vs. Indexing: Dive Deeper

Since indexing only happens after crawling, some website owners conflate the two processes or mistakenly think that they can influence the speed of crawling to speed up indexing. Unfortunately, that's not how it works. The speed of crawling is determined almost entirely by Google and is influenced by its own internal systems, policies, algorithms, and even the health of its current infrastructure.

Understanding the true roles of crawling and indexing can help you make better sense of what Googler representatives share about the Google indexing process. For example, Paul Hailey, a Google Search engineer, once tweeted that indexing can happen in a matter of seconds after a page is crawled. This doesn't mean that your pages will be indexed within seconds of being published, but rather that indexing happens almost instantly for pages that are already well-known to Google.

For example, if you were to update a page on the Google Developers Blog and publish it, that page would likely be crawled and indexed within a few minutes since Googlebot already knows the site and its pages.

On the other hand, if you were to launch a new website with no previous digital footprint and publish a page with the same content, the indexing process might take weeks. This is because Google has to discover, crawl, and then index the page, which can be a lengthy and complicated process for new sites.

How Long Does Google Typically Take to Index a New Website?

So, on average, how long does Google take to index a new website? According to data from an SEO poll, the majority of respondents (43%) believe it takes anywhere between 1 to 3 months for Google to index a new website.

Despite the fact that this data is anecdotal and based on personal opinions, it does kind of match up with what we see in our own website experiments. In 2022, we launched a brand-new, completely anonymous test website to explore the world of SEO.

Using IndexBolt, a tool that tracks and monitors Google indexing data, we recorded how long it took for the pages of this new website to be indexed by Google.

Looking at the data for the 40 blog posts we published, we can see that 20% of pages were indexed within a week, and about 50% of pages were indexed within a month of being published. However, even after 10 months, there were still 10% of pages that had not been indexed.

Based on our research, the real time it takes for Google to index a new page after publication is somewhere between 1 to 6 months.

Realistic Timeframes for Google Indexing (Expectations vs. Reality)

But before you get too disheartened by those lengthy timeframes, it's important to manage your expectations about Google indexing.

Many website owners, particularly beginners, have unrealistic expectations about how quickly Google will index new pages. This can be due to widely exaggerated or misleading claims made by SEO "experts." Some even market "faster indexing solutions" as products and imply that indexing is a process you can pay to expedite.

If you're under the impression that Google should index your pages almost immediately after publication, you might feel like something is going wrong if your pages aren't appearing in the search results after a few days or weeks. This might lead you to make potentially harmful changes to your website, such as resubmitting URLs multiple times or even altering your content or metadata in a panicked rush.

So instead of worrying about how long it takes to index your pages, focus on actually creating great content and providing a good user experience. With time, your pages will naturally be indexed by Google.

Factors That Influence Google Indexing Speed

While there isn't much you can do to influence the time it takes for Google to index your pages, there are still a few factors that can play a role in the speed of indexing. Let's take a look at the most important ones.

Website Authority and Trustworthiness

Domain authority (a made-up metric created by Moz) and trustworthiness are two closely linked factors that can have an impact on the speed of Google indexing. The more established and reputable your website is, the faster your pages will be indexed.

New websites without any digital history can expect to wait longer for their pages to be indexed. This is simply because Google has to discover their pages first, whereas it already knows and regularly visits established websites.

However, this doesn't mean you need to be a major brand or business with loads of industry-wide recognition to have good authority or trust. You can still build up the authority of your small or local business website over time by consistently publishing great content and acquiring backlinks from reputable, relevant websites.

Crawl Budget: Is Googlebot Visiting Enough?

Crawl budget refers to the number of pages Googlebot can and wants to crawl on your website within a given timeframe.

While crawl budget is a controversial topic, with some SEOs arguing it isn't a real concept and others suggesting it only applies to specific use cases, it is a factor when it comes to indexing speed. After all, if Googlebot isn't crawling your pages, it obviously can't index them.

So how can you know if crawl budget is an issue for you? If you have a large website and know that Google has previously crawled and indexed all of your pages, but now only a fraction of them are indexed, this could suggest that your crawl budget is exhausted.

However, it's important to note that ensuring Googlebot crawls all of your pages won't guarantee that they'll be indexed. Many pages will still be filtered out during the indexing process.

Content Quality and Uniqueness

As mentioned earlier, Google only indexes a small percentage of the pages it crawls. This percentage can significantly increase if the pages Googlebot is crawling are high-quality, original, spam-free, and relevant to the search intent.

It's no coincidence that pages from our test website were indexed more rapidly after we improved the content quality of certain articles.

Website Structure and Navigation

Googlebot needs to be able to easily access your pages in order to crawl and index them. If your website structure is complicated, cluttered, or confusing, this can hinder indexing.

For example, if the only way to reach your pages is through other non-indexed pages, they will also remain non-indexed. Ensuring that your important pages can be accessed from at least one indexed page will help improve their chances of being indexed.

Technical SEO Health

While technical SEO issues mostly affect the crawling process, they can also have a negative impact on indexing. Any problems that prevent Googlebot from fully rendering your pages or that alter the appearance of your content in the Google indexing process (like Javascript issues, erroneous robots tags, or accidental 404 errors) can lead to indexing issues.

Can You Speed Up Google Indexing? Tips and Strategies

Research from Ahrefs found that over 60% of SEOs believe they can influence the speed of indexing. This number is surprisingly high for a misconception that is so widespread.

While there have been reports of strange indexing phenomena, like Google indexing nearly 100% of pages on certain websites after they submitted their sitemaps or tweeting their links to Google, there's really nothing you can do to consistently speed up the indexing process.

However, there are still a few helpful strategies you can use to potentially improve the speed of Google indexing.

Submitting Your Sitemap to Google Search Console

One of the most widely recommended tips for increasing indexing speed is to submit your sitemap in Google Search Console (GSC).

While this won't guarantee faster indexing for your pages, it does make Google aware of the URLs in your sitemap and gives you the opportunity to track the indexing status of those pages. If there are any indexing issues, you can attempt to resolve them and ensure that Google is able to index your pages.

Ensuring Your Website is Crawlable

For pages to be indexed by Google, they first need to be crawled. Therefore, ensuring your website has good crawling accessibility can help improve indexing.

Make sure aggressive settings on your security plugins or firewalls aren't blocking Googlebot from accessing your website. Ensure that your robots.txt file isn't preventing important pages from being crawled and, most importantly, avoid mistakenly adding noindex tags to pages you want to rank and receive traffic.

Creating High-Quality, Indexable Content

Since low-quality or duplicate pages are filtered out during the Google indexing process, creating high-quality, original content will give it a better chance of being indexed.

Additionally, ensuring that your pages are fully indexable will prevent any accidental omissions. To guarantee that your content is indexable, make sure you aren't using any HTML elements that accidentally prevent indexing (like noindex tags on category pages) and that users can view all of your content without logging in or filling out a form.

Promoting Your Website to Get Noticed Faster

Google has to know that your website exists in order to find your pages and index them. One of the best ways to ensure Google is aware of your new website and its pages is to promote it across the web.

Share your content on social media, get involved in online communities like Quora or Reddit, and add your business to local directories. The more places your website is linked to, the easier it will be for Google's crawling robots to find it.

Leverage Faster Indexing Solutions

Earlier this year, Google announced a new, experimental indexing API for blogs, news sites, and any other websites that publish regularly time-sensitive content.

This API is designed to allow developers to programmatically notify Google's systems whenever they publish, update, or delete their pages. This means that the pages can be crawled and indexed almost in real-time.

However, there's a catch. This API is only available to a handful of Google partners like WordPress.com, Webflow, and Shopify and can't be used by the average website owner or developer unless they happen to use one of these platforms.

Additionally, the standard indexing API is still available for use, but it's only meant for structured data (schema markup) and should technically not be misused as a way to speed up Google indexing.

According to Google, if you use the standard indexing API, you should have a good reason to notify Google about changes to your pages, such as with job postings or events. Using it on regular blog posts can result in your Google indexing privileges being revoked.

Final Thoughts: Patience and Proactive Steps for Google Indexing

When it comes to indexing, patience is a virtue. While there are a few steps you can take to promote faster indexing, the reality is that consistently delivering great content and a good user experience is the best way to ensure that Google will index your pages over time.

If you want to improve your website's chances of being indexed more rapidly, implement the tips we've discussed in this article. And if you're looking for further advice on making your website more visible in Google or improving your technical SEO, don't hesitate to reach out to the experts at Finsweet today!

Optimize Your Site for Indexing Today

Do you want to improve your site's performance in search, ensure its pages are indexed quickly by Google, and have support from an experienced SEO team?

At IndexBolt, we provide tailored SEO solutions to help your business grow!

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