Submit your website to Google, then put it on autopilot

Google can only index a page it is allowed to fetch and keep. Fix these first, or Request Indexing comes back rejected:

• The page loads with status 200. No 404, no redirect, no login wall.
• No noindex. A noindex meta tag or X-Robots-Tag header tells Google to drop the page. Test any URL with the free noindex checker.
• Not blocked by robots.txt. A Disallow rule stops Googlebot from crawling the page at all. Paste your domain into the robots.txt checker to see what it blocks.

This is the method Google documents. Plan on a few minutes for the first site, then one click per new page.

1. 1

   Add and verify your site in Google Search Console

   Sign in to Google Search Console with a Google account and choose Add property. You get two property types:

   • Domain property: covers every subdomain (www, m, blog) and both http and https. Verified with a DNS TXT record at your registrar.
   • URL-prefix property: covers one exact address, such as https://www.example.com/. Verified with an HTML file, a meta tag in your homepage <head>, Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager.

   Before you press Verify, search your page source for google-site-verification to confirm the tag is live. Add a second verification method in the property settings, so a redesign that drops the tag doesn't lock you out. One Google account can manage up to 1,000 properties.

2. 2

   Submit your sitemap

   Open Indexing, then Sitemaps. Type your sitemap address (usually sitemap.xml) into Add a new sitemap and press Submit. A status of Success means Google fetched it; Has errors or Couldn't fetch means it needs a fix.

   One sitemap file can list up to 50,000 URLs and 50 MB uncompressed; bigger sites split it into several files joined by a sitemap index. Not sure your sitemap is valid, or where it lives? Run it through the free sitemap checker, and add a Sitemap: line to robots.txt so every crawler finds it.

3. 3

   Inspect a URL and press Request Indexing

   Paste the full page URL, including https://, into the inspection bar at the top of Search Console. Press Test live URL and open Page indexing: both Crawl allowed? and Indexing allowed? should say Yes. Then press Request indexing.

   Google runs a quick check for indexing errors, and if the page passes, it joins Google's crawl queue. The Request Indexing guide explains every answer Google can give and what to do about each one.

4. 4

   Repeat for every new or updated page

   Request Indexing takes one URL at a time, and Google caps it at about 10 requests per property per day (Google says there is a quota but doesn't publish the number). Pressing it again for the same URL won't speed anything up, so spend the quota on new pages and real updates.

Submitting your website means giving Google your sitemap: a list of every page you want indexed. It is how Google learns your site exists and what is on it, and it covers the whole site at once.

Submitting a URL means pressing Request Indexing for one page. It asks Google to crawl that page soon, instead of whenever it gets to it in your sitemap. New pages show up fastest with both: the sitemap for coverage, Request Indexing for speed.

Submitting your website to Google by hand is free. IndexMachine sign-up is free too: it imports every site in your Search Console and shows which pages Google hasn't indexed yet.

To turn on the daily requests, lifetime plans start at $12.50 once for one site and 1,000 pages (code BETA50 at checkout), with 5-site and 10-site plans and a subscription for unlimited sites. Compare them on the IndexMachine pricing page.

1. Find the reason in Search Console

Open Indexing, then Pages. The report groups every URL Google knows by the reason it isn't indexed: not found (404), blocked by robots.txt, excluded by noindex, crawled but not indexed, and so on. Inspect one URL from a group to see its last crawl date and whether crawling and indexing are allowed. For a plain-English answer, paste the URL into our free why is my page not indexed checker.

2. Fix the page, not the request

A deleted page you still need: restore it, or 301-redirect the old address to the new one and update internal links. A robots.txt block or a noindex you didn't mean: remove it. Pages that are fine but sit in "Crawled, currently not indexed" usually need more unique content or more internal links; the guide to Crawled, currently not indexed walks through it.

3. Ask again, once

After the fix, press Validate fix on the issue in the Pages report, or Request Indexing on the page itself. Then give it time: see how long Google takes to index new pages. To check where a single URL stands, the free Google index checker tests whether it can be indexed at all.