Google Webmaster Tools now has a new feature called the “Fetch as GoogleBot” which gives users the option  to submit new and updated URLs for them to get indexed. Once a URL has been successfully “fetched”, another option will appear and will let you “Submit a URL”. Once the URL submitted, the GoogleBot will come crawl that URL to index it. It usually does so within the same day or a day time maximum. However, there is no guarantee that every submitted URL will get indexed, even though submitted manually, the URL will go through the regular procedures in order to get indexed.

This new feature may help users in many different ways such as: let’s say you just launched a new website or added a few key web pages to your website, you can use this feature to send the GoogleBot to find and crawl them instantly instead of waiting for the GoogleBot to come naturally and discover all your new web pages. Now this feature isn’t only for new web pages, if you brought updates to existing pages and you would like them to be indexed without any delay, this option can help you as well.

Submitting Your URL

Before being able to submit a URL, you will first have to “Fetch” that URL. To do so, click on “Diagnostics” then “Fetch As GoogleBot” and write down the URL you wish to fetch. If the URL was fetched successfully, you will see a “Submit to Index” link appear next to the URL.

Once the “Submit To Index” button has been clicked, you’ll see a dialog box that will appear which will allow you to specify whether you would like submit only one URL or the URL that its linking to.

If you are submitting individual URLs, know that there is a maximum of 50 submissions per week. If you submit URLs with all linked pages, your limit is of 10 per month.  The number of submissions you have left are in the “Fetch as GoogleBot” page.  Remember that all URLs that are submitted should point to web pages that have content and that could be relevant to a search query. Do not use this feature to submit videos or images, use sitemaps instead.

Related Articles:

Ask a SEO Question – FREE Expert Answers