Guide
How to get Google to index your website
The order matters more than the tactics. Most pages that will not index are failing at step one or two, and no amount of submitting fixes that.
The path, in the order that works
1
Make the page crawlable
No
noindex, not blocked in robots.txt, returns 200, and the canonical points at itself. Get this wrong and every later step is wasted effort.
2
Give it an internal link
A page no other page links to is a page Google has little reason to value. Link it from somewhere real — a hub, a nav, a related article. Orphan pages are the most common cause of "discovered, currently not indexed".
3
List it in your sitemap
The sitemap is bulk discovery, not a priority queue. It tells Google the URL exists and when it changed. Submit the sitemap once in Search Console; you do not need to resubmit it after every edit.
4
Submit it directly
Search Console's URL Inspection → Request Indexing for one-offs, or the Indexing API at scale. For Bing and friends, IndexNow does the same job instantly and for free.
5
Verify, then wait properly
Check the URL Inspection verdict rather than searching for your own page in Google, which is unreliable. If it says indexed, you are done. If it says crawled but not indexed, go fix the page — see the FAQ below.
Common questions
Related: how to submit a URL · forcing a recrawl.
How long does Google take to index a new page?
There is no fixed answer — hours for an established site with strong internal links, weeks or never for a new domain with none. That variance is exactly why we measure per URL instead of quoting an industry average.
Does submitting a URL guarantee it gets indexed?
No. Submission gets your URL considered. Google still decides based on whether the page is discoverable, crawlable, canonical, and worth storing. Most "not indexed" cases are quality or duplication problems, not submission problems.
Do I need Search Console?
For Google, effectively yes. It is the only place you can see Google's own verdict on a URL, and Owner access is what authorises API-based submission.
My page is crawled but not indexed. What now?
That specific status means Google fetched the page and chose not to store it. Re-submitting will not change its mind. Fix the underlying cause — thin or duplicated content, a canonical pointing elsewhere, or a page that adds nothing the index does not already have.
Measure it instead of refreshing Search Console.
We re-check each URL on a decaying schedule and record the exact moment it lands. 25 free.
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