Phoenix Website Design – When Should You Request Google to Recrawl Your Website?

On daily basis, Google tries its best to find new content and new websites. However, there are times that you ask Google to scan or crawl your websites. Sometimes, it is best to force Google in crawling specific pages of our site.

So, when do we ask Google to check a website again?

Before I proceed going into specific details, the step of recrawling and re-indexing a website should NOT be done regularly. There are only specific cases, wherein you should ask Google for a website recrawling. When the recrawl process done properly, it will expedite the process. Thus, quickly getting into Google’s index.

Website Changes

• It is recommended to ask Google a re-indexing of your website when you are making a huge change that will affect the entire website. For instance, when you are changing the URLs or when you are moving from HTTP to HTTPS.

Domain Transfer

• Next scenario is when you are renaming or changing domain names. Previously, I wrote a blog post about Why Switching Domains Can Be a Real Challenge. If you need help on this section, I also wrote about What Are the Guidelines to Follow When Changing Domains? Better tell Google to crawl both sites so that their index will be update quickly.

Re-Branding

• In some cases, changing domain names is not a necessary requirement. Even if you are merely re-branding business, it is still a good practice to ask for a re-index. It is because this is quite similar to making website changes. Hence, you could be making significant changes to the titles, URLs, and website structure.

Website Reinvention

• Redesigning your website could also mean it’s time to re-index the website because you could be applying another theme, removing codes, adding newer JavaScript / HTML codes, and redesigning the existing menus.

Website Audit

• After going through a content audit, you may have deleted web pages, added internal link, and redirect to newer pages. This could be enough reason to give Google a heads up to recrawl your website.

Google Penalty

• For some website that received a penalty, of course, you have to comply and make the necessary edits. After you have made changes the website, it is recommended to ask Google to index the website once again. However, this does not mean that you have averted the penalty imposed by Google. It only means that this can help in accelerating the process.

When do we request Google to recrawl specific webpages?

Recrawling does not only apply to the whole website because you can also ask Google to scan only a number of pages. Here are instances where it is okay to request for Google to recrawl specific pages:

Relevant and Timely Blog Posts

• This is applicable when you are posting about a “breaking news” or a “this just in.” Anything that is happening now is eligible for a indexing. So, if you are publishing these types of post, then don’t hesitate to request indexing.

Changing the Content of a Page

• If you happen to edit or update a particular blog post, then immediately tell Google to re-index. This would mean significant changes, okay? It would count if you purely corrected a simple grammatical error.

Edited the Title and the Meta Description

• This is specifically important if the pages has high rankings. Please let Google know that you have made a substantial change on the title and/or meta description of a webpage.