Recently there has been changes in the way webmasters can submit the URL to Google for Indexing. Old method of submitting URL doesnot work any longer.

In this post I will show you what the new method is and how to fix the issues if the your URL does not appear in Google Search.

Prerequisites

If you are hosting a website, you would probably have this already, or you need to create one.

• Google Search Console
• Sitemap

Submit URL to Search Console Manually

Google’s recommended method is to submit the sitemap for indexing and wait for some time. In my case, it normally takes one day.

Alternatively you can also submit the URL to Google Search Console. Couple of months back, the URL used to take a day to get indexed. But these days I see that the url gets indexed within 15 minutes.

So, first things first

Log in to Search console and enter URL in the Inspect URL search bar and hit enter.

This will check the status of the URL. You need to wait for a while. For the new URL, it will say URL not indexed. After Google checks the status, you will see the option to request URL for indexing option. Click on that and wait for Google to do its work. Earlier this took 1 day in my case. Sometimes, URL got indexed instantly. These days, the URL gets indexed in 5-15 mins. So there is no fixed time for the URL to be indexed.

Wait for sometime and you will get this message

Once you click on Got it, this is what you see

Wait for some time and you will see the URL indexed confirmation

Test Live URL

You also have the option to test the Live URL. After you enter the URL in Inspect URL, Google will check the indexing status. Once, Google displays the indexing status, you will see the option to test the Live URL.

Click on Test Live URL to test the URL and wait for sometime. The result page will show you the issues. Click on the issues to see what the issues are.

Submit URL for re-indexing

If you have updated a page and you want it to be re-indexed, enter the url in Inspect URL and in the result page click on the option to index page.

What is the new Google recommended method

Google has released a new platform called Google Search Console. Search Console has replaced Google Webmasters Tools, that is Webmasters tools is phased and no longer works. So going forward we have to work with the new Search Console platform.

New Google Search Console Screenshot:

So lets get started with the steps to submit the URL to Google Search Console.

Step 1 – Submit Sitemap

What Google recommends is that you submit the sitemap once your website is updated with new content or if you want the site to be re-indexed. Google will schedule the site to be indexed based on their internal schedule. At this point you have to wait. It normally takes 2-5 hours. It could be less, but it all depends on Google.

If you have a WordPress site, sitemap plugins such as Google XML Sitemaps automatically creates and updates the sitemap and pings all the major search engines. This automatically submits sitemaps to the search engines.

If you are impatient, you could go to Search Console -> Sitemaps and enter the URL of the sitemap and submit. You can see the status of the sitemap also. For newly submitted sitemap, you will see the status as “Scheduled”. Wait for the status to change to Success. This might take a while. It could be as long as 2-3 hours. But have patience.

Step 2 – Check the status of the page to be indexed

Once the status of Sitemap changes to “Success” in webmaster tool sitemaps (Search console status is not reliable), you can check the status of submitted URL. The Sitemap status of success does not mean that your pages have been indexed. It just means that that Google has queued them for indexing. Still long time to wait, approx – 2-3 hours.
To check the status of the page if it is indexed on not, enter the URL of the page in “Inspect any URL” search bar. This will show you the current status of the page on google search.

Initially you will see something like this will all “N/A”, URL not available on Google. Have patience, status will change in sometime.

After some time you will see the status to change as below.

Finally, Once Indexing is done, you will see the status as below.

Now check the URL in Google. That is do a URL search by entering the URL of the page in Google search. if you see the result them all good.

How to solve URL not indexed issue

Earlier, In my case, for one of my page I had submitted sitemap and after 4-5 hours could see in Search console that the URL was on Google. But when I search the URL on Google, it was not there. Tried a lot but still nothing. Then I realized that Search Console might have some quirks. To get around the problem, this is what I did. I logged int the old webmasters tool. Under Crawl -> Fetch, submitted the URL. Once this was done I saw the option to submit the URL to Google for indexing. And after couple of minutes the URL was on Google.

Since old webmaster tool is no longer available, the above method does not work. We have to trust Search Console. Best way is to submit the URL to Search Console manually and wait.

Old Webmaster tools does not work

• Please note that Old Webmasters tool URL does not work and it has been deprecated.

  Below is the screenshot of the old webmaster tool.

  

  Goolge Webmasters tool web page screenshot (Old)

• Old method of submitting the url does not work
  Earlier what I did was to visit the Submit URL – Google web page to submit the new URL. I had to enter the url that I wanted to submit for indexing, check the capcha – I am not a robot and submit. The page got indexed automatically after that. Pages got index almost instantly. But this no longer works.

  Old Submit URL page screenshot. This option does not show up now
  

  Currently this is what we see. There is a links to submit the Sitemap and a link to visit Search as Google Tool documentation. There is no option to submit the URL to Google search for indexing.

  

Good Luck.