What factors affect the speed at which sites are indexed in Google?


Some sites get indexed in less than 5 minutes whereas mine takes 1-2 days...

When they find a link that points to the website.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

When they find a link that points to the website.

So its only based on inbound links?
What about quality of content, keyword density?

Originally Posted by aadam

So its only based on inbound links?
What about quality of content, keyword density?

What about them ??


there is no such metric as "keyword density".

And how would the "quality of content" get a SE crawler to the site initially.

Hmmm, fair point, thanks.

Adam how fast a site or page gets indexed is pretty much about links. Matt Cutts has said a few times that Google uses PageRank in determining crawling. More PR means your site will get crawled deeper and more often. PR of course is really a measure of links and more specifically a measure of the PR of the links pointing into your site and page, so in the end it comes down to links.

More links and links from high PR sites or sites that get crawled frequently. In the end though, if we're talking about a new site does it really matter if it gets indexed in a few minutes, hours, or days. The only time something like that should be an issue is if the site is news oriented and getting your content out first is important. Most of the time that's not true.

As long as you're getting indexed within a couple of days there's really nothing to worry about.

You can even change the crawl speed in Google Webmaster Tools settings.

Originally Posted by vangogh

Adam how fast a site or page gets indexed is pretty much about links. Matt Cutts has said a few times that Google uses PageRank in determining crawling. More PR means your site will get crawled deeper and more often. PR of course is really a measure of links and more specifically a measure of the PR of the links pointing into your site and page, so in the end it comes down to links.

More links and links from high PR sites or sites that get crawled frequently. In the end though, if we're talking about a new site does it really matter if it gets indexed in a few minutes, hours, or days. The only time something like that should be an issue is if the site is news oriented and getting your content out first is important. Most of the time that's not true.

As long as you're getting indexed within a couple of days there's really nothing to worry about.

Not forgetting that when Matt Cutts or any other Google employee talks about PR they are NOT talking about the SGB form of PR. They are talking about REAL PR

If google find your link, it will index. Then...Go to the sandbox. LOL

some say its how often you update your site because google love new and fresh content. Is this right?

Nope.

Just the usual rubbish from people who guess at what happens, because how does Google know there is "fresh content" there to index?

ot forgetting that when Matt Cutts or any other Google employee talks about PR they are NOT talking about the SGB form of PR. They are talking about REAL PR

Very true. I can't believe I forgot to make the distinction for a change

The availability of HTML within a websites and submitting an XML form sitemap will boost the indexing rate of a website.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

Nope.

Just the usual rubbish from people who guess at what happens, because how does Google know there is "fresh content" there to index?

They know through pinging services. Three things can help get your new pages indexed rapidly. Pinging the search engines when new content is posted. Posting new content on a regular basis. And posting primarily unique content.

If you ping the search engines but you rarely ever post new content it will take longer before the page is indexed. If you post duplicate content over time your are less likely to get indexed quickly.

I have a number of test blogs that have led to me noting these items. Now does it really matter if your site gets indexed in 5 minutes or 8 hours. Probably not unless it is a news site.

They know through pinging services. Three things can help get your new pages indexed rapidly. Pinging the search engines when new content is posted. Posting new content on a regular basis. And posting primarily unique content.

Actually they "respond" because the "ping service" reads the RSS feed and aggregators create LINKS to the content.

I have NEVER "pinged" any new content and still had new pages crawled within minutes of a page going live. Things did work pretty well before blogs, pings and RSS feeds came along you know.