How to Speed up Google Indexing? How Do We Index Our Clients’ Sites Within 48h?

What will you learn?

• How Google is currently indexing websites,
• What Google Indexing API is and how to use it,
• How we’ve managed to speed up website indexing for our clients without using Google API,
• If Google indexing is likely to be paid in the future.

Is Google Indexing Free? Yes, but… Google Indexation Issues – A Preview of What May Come

Do you know why I decided to write this entry in the first place? Have you heard that Google withdrew the Submit URL tool?

This, in turn, translated into problems with website indexation that were first noticed in October 2021.

What do they mean in real life? In simple words, website owners have to wait much longer till their pages and content is crawled and indexed by search engine robots.

Do you see? I’m not the only one who has noticed the problem. Website owners and SEO specialists from around the world struggle to find an effective recipe for indexing their pages.

Content creators, online store owners, and many other professionals have difficulties indexing new content, products, categories, blog posts, and other pieces.

According to Google’s official statement, the algorithm was modified which has had a negative impact on indexation. Nevertheless, the search engine promises that everything will go back to normal and start working seamlessly again.

It’s also worth mentioning that many specialists have noticed that although Google Search Console offers an option to download the page and submit it for indexation, it’s only a suggestion for Google and frequently, it’s not taken into account.

Before October 2021, each such request resulted in search engine robots visiting the site within approximately 48 hours. However, that’s not the case anymore.

I’ve noticed on numerous occasions that content pieces published on our clients’ websites hadn’t been indexed even for three months.

Moreover, this period was further influenced by numerous factors such as the industry, or crawl budget of a specific website.

As you may know, the higher your website authority, the greater its crawl budget, at least in theory. This means that Google should visit it more frequently.

However, reality frequently has nothing to do with theory. Even sizable and reputable websites with impressive crawl budgets reported problems with indexation.

Therefore, many industry experts (including me) started wondering how to face the challenge without resorting to illegal black hat SEO tricks.

How to Speed up Google Indexing – New Solutions

I decided to take a closer look at the issue and search for an independent solution that would allow me to efficiently index clients’ websites, without relying on Google algorithm, their modifications, and the recently developed indexing API.

Are you looking for effective tools supporting quick indexation? Read today’s article to discover how I sped up Google indexing on my clients’ websites.

Google’s API

What is Google API? The Indexing API (application programming interface) was created by Google and it provides site owners with the possibility to notify the search engine when they add or remove a page. It’s supposed to streamline the indexation process.

Where to find it? Check out Google Cloud Console API Library:

Above, you can see screenshots from Google’s interface showing where you can find API.

This API can be used for various websites and it communicates with Google Search Console. It promises to notify the search engine each time your website changes, which is supposed to improve URL indexing.

Not Only Google

What to do if the solution offered by Google doesn’t meet your expectations? Don’t worry!

There already are SEO tools and scripts that can be written in python. Rank Math and its “Indexing Now” can be used to communicate with Bing, which is developing a competing service to Google’s tool.

Bing offers the solution to real tycoons such as Amazon to help them quickly index new products, categories, or other content pieces that appear on the site.

It seems that this newly developed solution is quite effective and Google follows Bing in its footsteps, trying to come up with a better, refined tool.

Rank Math which already included options to communicate with Bing has also introduced the possibility to communicate with Google API.

How to Work with Google API?

Are you wondering how to start your adventure with Google API? You’ll need to create an API key and configure it for your domain by connecting it to Google Search Console (domain verification is required here).

When doing it, you should have the following access levels: Owner – both in Google Search Console and in the project set up in Google Cloud:

To learn more about Indexing API developed by Google, check out: https://developers.google.com/search/apis/indexing-api/v3/quickstart?hl=en_US

What’s Different with Google Indexing API?

While Google recommends uploading the sitemap, Indexing API prompts Googlebot to index pages earlier than the sitemap is updated.

Moreover, it’s worth noting that the sitemap frequently doesn’t change, as the URL remains the same, and only website content is modified (adding new content, optimizing it for SEO, altering internal linking, refining UX, and so on).

Consequently, you want to tell Google about these changes, so that it quickly visits the site and indexes its up-to-date version.

In the case of numerous e-commerce stores, it’s crucial to immediately index newly launched products, blog posts or reviews, and it can’t be done within a few days, not to mention a few months.

During our SEO process, we strive to ensure that our clients’ websites, products, and blog posts are indexed fast. 

That’s why we continuously work on increasing the crawl budgets of our clients and develop an efficient indexation tool that is compatible with Google and operates effectively regardless of CMS (whether it’s WordPress, Magento, Shopify, or custom CMS).

Although the internet abounds in indexers and solutions that were developed a few years ago, they’re rather shady and rely on black hat SEO.

What does it mean? They use PBNs and automatic linking systems (including SWL) to support indexing. As you probably know, Google doesn’t approve of such actions and knows that they’re artificial.

Consequently, using such indexers frequently can give a counterproductive result. Your site won’t be indexed and it’ll additionally get spammy links.

What’s noteworthy about Google Indexing API? It’s a valuable source of information about your website indexing.

Apart from seeing that API really supports website indexation, you get an insight into the crawling process, its frequency, and effectiveness (e.g., information about error rate, etc.)

Below you can see screenshots showing indexing statistics of our clients’ websites after using Google API:

This is one of our clients’ websites where we introduced API. As soon as it was implemented, crawlers started to visit the website (below you can also see the screenshots showing the number of indexed pages before and after using Google Indexing API):

Our client’s indexed pages before implementing the API solution – service website

The same client’s indexed pages after the API solution was implemented – the service website

The number of indexed pages before the API solution was implemented – ecommerce client

The number of indexed pages after the API solution was implemented – ecommerce client

To prove that API works, let’s take a look at the effects of other SEO specialists:

Of course, when testing the solution, we primarily monitor its effect on our clients’ websites.

Google’s API – What Does It Mean for Regular Users?

Google is constantly expanding its services. Indexing API has been released only recently and will certainly be used to streamline communication between indexers and websites.

This course of events makes sense because Google faces numerous resource challenges.

Considering how many millions of pages are created daily, it can be infeasible for the search engine to visit and crawl all of them while removing spammy or auto-generated sites that don’t bring any value to users.

Such Indexing API can be an effective solution because ultimately only the sites using it will be able to send indexation requests to the robots. This way, Google will know that it’s dealing with a quality, reliable website that should be quickly crawled.

Will We Have to Pay for Indexing Pages in Google?

Although there are numerous tools and solutions that temporarily solve the problem of website indexing, it’s crucial to take a closer look at this issue as:

• Google Indexing API is free only in a limited range. This means that you can request indexing of a specific number of pages. For the time being, the limits are being tested, but this may indicate that larger players and owners of more sizable websites will have to pay to use the tool and index all their pages in the future.
• Want to know my theory? Since Google has to use its resources to index a specific page, it may require us to pay for those resources.

Possible Scenarios for Google’s Paid Indexation Future

There is no need to worry! Even if Google wants us to pay for website indexing, these probably won’t be big amounts.

Even today, there are numerous systems that use Google API (e.g., advertising systems, CMS, tools for managing product feeds, or keyword monitoring) which allow you to access, manage, and monitor limited data. This means that if you want to see the entire database, you’ve to pay for the resources.

With all the probability, Google will aim to make the solution as popular and widely used as possible to ensure that large platforms like WordPress, or Magento will rely on API or build plugins and charge subscription fees for them.

How much will you need to pay? I expect amounts ranging from $5 to $15 per month. For large, quality websites such fees shouldn’t be problematic.

Want to discover an even more probable scenario? In my opinion, it’s very likely that popular CMSes will start to provide users with pre-built Google API. It’ll be available either in the form of fee-based CMS tools or dedicated paid plugins.

What if you don’t use a popular CMS? Don’t worry, with the professional support of website developers, you’ll be able to write dedicated scripts, integrate Google API with your page, and pay for indexing on your own.

At Delante, right after Google Indexing API was launched, we started developing our own application to further accelerate website indexing for our clients. It was created based on a structured process flow:

Delante’s indexing app interface.

This tool allows us to effectively and efficiently submit clients’ websites for indexation. Moreover, it’s a valuable source of information about the indexation status and possible problems that may occur on the site:

To be honest, although the process of designing the tool was time and energy-consuming, the juice was definitely worth the squeeze.

Currently, we’re able to index crucial pages of our clients already within 6-48 hours, while previously we had to wait for it even a few months.

Benefits of Paid Indexation in the Future

What if my prediction proves true and website indexing is paid? Will this hinder the work of SEO specialists?

Not necessarily!

Paid Website Indexation Has Numerous Benefits:

• Thanks to the paid solution, Google will be able to quickly identify all spammy, automatically created websites that don’t bring any value to users. How? Such sites probably won’t even bother to implement Google API, as it requires GSC authorization.
• Consequently, the search engine will be able to save a large part of its resources that used to be allocated to index spammy sites.
• Website owners will be able to sleep soundly knowing that their crawl budget is managed more efficiently and pages are actually indexed.
• Overall, it can be a good source of revenue for Google that will benefit users as well. How is it possible? On the one hand, website and online store owners will be provided with an easy and effective way for managing their indexation processes. On the other hand, the search engine will be able to identify low-quality, spammy sites, and generate extra revenues without burdening users who offer valuable content.

The Takeaway

For the past few months, many industry specialists have been observing serious problems with website indexation.

It quickly turned out that it was caused by algorithm changes implemented by Google to optimize processes and provide users with high-quality search results.

Not so long ago, the search engine launched a special Indexing API that makes it possible to quickly add URLs to Google and solves the issue of slow indexing.

There are still many questions about the future of Google’s resources, but with all the probability, the solution proposed by the Moutain View giant will benefit both website owners and users in the long run.

Do you need help with speeding up your website’s indexation? Contact us to see what can we do for you!