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Having trouble getting your content indexed quickly? This may help.
Getting your content indexed quickly has never been this hard. Many people have been having issues, myself including.
It looks like this started really becoming an issue after May’s broad core update.
Before, I’d have new content indexed near instantly through GSC and, without requesting indexing there, usually within 24 – 48h.
It looks like the game has really changed, because it’s taking so much longer than before. I think it’s a combination of:
a) Google’s gotten more picky about the content they index (they’re aiming for more “quality content”)
b) Google requires more external signals (e.g. backlinks, social shares) to prioritize indexing.On top of that, Google’s been having a lot of indexing issues (canonicalization, mobile indexing, news-indexing, sports scores and more). [1]
I put together [a 13-step checklist](https://www.contentkingapp.com/academy/google-index/) to help me diagnose potential issues that were hurting the indexing process, as well as follow up actions to speed up the indexing process. It’s working well for me, so I decided to write it all down and make it public.
Now, even though yesterday Google’s broken the “request indexing” feature [2] in GSC, there’s plenty you can do to get your content indexed, quickly. My advice: don’t leave it up to the Google gods whether or not your content gets indexed, but instead take as much control as you can.
My questions for /r/SEO:
1) Have you been seeing the same thing as I have?
2) What have you done to counter it?I’m curious to hear about your experiences, and happy to spot check any indexing issues you may be having!
[1] [https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-ranking-update-indexing-issues-fixes-30262.html](https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-ranking-update-indexing-issues-fixes-30262.html)
[2] [https://twitter.com/googlewmc/status/1316463867296395268](https://twitter.com/googlewmc/status/1316463867296395268)We have disabled the "Request Indexing" feature of the URL Inspection Tool, in order to make some infrastructure changes. We expect it will return in the coming weeks. We continue to find & index content through our regular methods, as covered here: https://t.co/rMFVaLht6V
— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) October 14, 2020
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10 Replies
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Nice post, keep it up.
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Decent checklist, but what about when Google is just “broken”?I mean I get it when they refuse to index junk pages with content just split up a thousand ways with ad inserts.
But I’ve seen lots of genuine brands struggle this year with indexation after trying all this stuff. Is the game just a more patient one these days sometimes?
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To the point and actionable. No fluff, I love that!
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I am too suffering from 70% traffic drop in 3 sites canonical errors and urls show no index on Google even they are indexed properly through GSC. Still showing errors I thought need to remove that page from website but your links help me lot. Thanks
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Every time the request index feature “breaks” just take a page that is currently indexed, edit in a link to the content that you want indexed, then request index on that page.
That or waiting 24 hours and trying to RI both pages has always worked for me.
While the feature is suspended, the #1 thing would be to have links on the pages that are currently indexed to the content that you want indexed.
That sounds obvious, but many sites are setup in a way where that’s not really the case and they mainly rely on their sitemap.
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Nice post mate. Social has been the way to go for me. Protip, add in some large traffic hashtags on to your tweets. You’ll find your posts indexed soon enough
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Thanks Mate it helps me a lot, I facing this same problem and searching for the solution and here i get the right solution, thank you
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Google Search Console won’t let us submit for reindexing due to “infrastructure changes.”
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Nicely digestible breakdown. Any idea when Google plans to give us the request indexing button back?
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Thanks for sharing it, really a great things to learn.
