Phoenix Website Design – How to Request Google to Re-Index a Website?

So, we are done discussing the “when” part. See my post on When Should You Request Google to Recrawl Your Website? This time, it’s all about the “how.” For this post, I will share in details the many ways you can request Google to re-index your website.

Take note: this article focuses on the URL Inspection tool, which is accessible through the Google Search Console. If you do NOT have an account on Google Search Console, you can go ahead and proceed to the 2nd method.

1^st Method: Using the URL Inspection Tool

• First, you have to add your website on to your Google Search Console account. Along with this account, you can now gain access to the built-in URL inspection tool.
• Upon click the URL INSPECTION TOOL on the left side of the screen, you can force Google to recrawl the said website.
• Next, you have to input the domain name of your website in the space provided, and don’t forget to click ENTER!
• Once you typed in the details, you can proceed to clicking the REQUEST INDEXING button.

2^nd Method: Using the PingTool

• For this step, you need to open your browser of choice, and you need to type the following URL: http://www.google.com/ping?sitemap=’exact location of your sitemap XML file’
• Remember, the location of the sitemap varies so be sure to change the part of the URL.
• For example, the full URL would be: http://www.google.com/ping?sitemap=http://mywebsite.com/mysitemap.xml
• Once you have submitted the URL, Google will be notified about this sitemap. Plus, there should be a notification that would pop-up to confirm the sitemap submission

How to request Google to re-index a specific webpage?

• If you want to re-index a page, the rules are the same. The only difference lies on the URL because you have to indicate the URL of the specific page.
• Hence, you will need to use the same URL Inspection tool, which is found in the Google Search Console.
  • First, you need to login to your Google Search Console account.
  • Next, Click the URL INSPECTION TOOL and tell Google to recrawl the specific page.
  • Fill in the space with the URL of the page and hit ENTER.
  • Lastly, click the REQUEST INDEXING button.

Is there a restriction?

To be honest, Google has deleted details about its crawl limits. However, they were always very vocal about having limit. So, yes, there are only a limited number of crawls per website or webpage.

Before deleting the details on their official documentation, these were the parameters of crawling:

• Website crawling: 2 sites a day, and
• Webpage crawling: 10 specific URLs per day.

How long does it take?

• The time that Google needs to complete the re-indexing process totally depends on the scenario. For instance, changes in the website’s content can take several days (or weeks) to finish.
• If it deals with website structure, you can see noticeable results instantaneously. In fact, Google gets the job done within 10 minutes or so.
• For to track the progress of the re-indexing, don’t forget to check the URL Inspection tool and Index Coverage reports on your Google Search Console dashboard.