Submit Url To Google

You just published a new blog post. It’s good. You’re proud of it. But Google doesn’t know it exists yet. And until Google indexes that page, it won’t show up in search results. Not for your target keyword, not for your brand name, not for anything.

I manage over 1,800 articles across my sites. Every time I publish or update a post, I submit the URL to Google. It takes me about 15 seconds. And the difference between doing this and just hoping Google finds your page on its own? Days. Sometimes weeks.

Here’s every method I use to get URLs indexed fast, with real timelines from my own sites in 2026.

Why Submitting URLs to Google Actually Matters

Most people think Google just “finds” everything on the web automatically. That’s technically true, but the timing is the problem. Googlebot crawls billions of pages. Your fresh blog post isn’t exactly a priority.

I’ve watched new pages on established sites sit undiscovered for 5 to 14 days when I didn’t submit them manually. On newer sites with less authority, I’ve seen pages take 3 to 4 weeks to get indexed on their own. That’s a month of zero organic traffic from a page that could be ranking.

Submitting your URL to Google is basically raising your hand and saying, “Hey, this page exists. Come look at it.” It doesn’t guarantee instant indexing, but it puts your page in the queue. And from my experience managing 850+ client sites, the ones who submit URLs consistently get indexed 3x to 5x faster than those who don’t.

The Real Cost of Slow Indexing

Think about this from a business perspective. You write a time-sensitive article about a trending topic. If Google takes 2 weeks to index it, the trend is over. Your traffic window closed before it even opened.

I had a client in 2024 who published a breaking news piece about a Google algorithm update. They didn’t submit the URL. By the time Google crawled it 9 days later, 40 other sites had already grabbed the traffic. After that, I set up a system where every new post gets submitted within 5 minutes of publishing. Their average time-to-index dropped from 8 days to under 48 hours.

Even for evergreen content, faster indexing means you start building ranking signals sooner. You get your first impressions, your first clicks, and Google starts learning where your page belongs in search results. Every day you’re not indexed is a day your competitors are collecting the traffic you should be getting.

Google Search Console URL Inspection Tool

This is the method I use for every single article I publish. It’s free, it’s official, and it works better than anything else I’ve tested. If you only do one thing from this entire article, do this.

Google Search Console’s URL Inspection tool lets you check the index status of any URL on your verified site and request indexing directly. I’ve been using it since Google retired the old “Fetch as Google” tool, and the current version in 2026 is reliable.

How to Submit a URL Step by Step

Here’s exactly what I do after every publish:

1. Open Google Search Console at search.google.com/search-console

2. Select your property from the dropdown (make sure you’re in the right one if you manage multiple sites)

3. Click the URL inspection bar at the top of the page

4. Paste the full URL of your new or updated page

5. Wait for Google to check the URL (takes 10 to 30 seconds)

6. Click “Request Indexing”

That’s it. Six steps. Takes about 15 seconds once you’re logged in. I do this so often it’s muscle memory at this point.

After you click “Request Indexing,” Google shows a message saying the URL has been added to a priority crawl queue. In my experience, most pages on established sites (100+ posts, regular publishing schedule) get indexed within 24 to 72 hours using this method. Newer sites might take 3 to 7 days, which is still way faster than waiting for organic discovery.

Understanding the Inspection Results

The URL Inspection tool gives you more than just an indexing button. It shows you the current status of your page, and this information is gold for troubleshooting.

When you inspect a URL, you’ll see one of these statuses: “URL is on Google” means it’s already indexed. “URL is not on Google” means it hasn’t been indexed yet. You’ll also see details about the last crawl date, the canonical URL Google chose, and whether the page is mobile-friendly. Pay attention to the “Coverage” section. It tells you exactly why a page isn’t indexed, if that’s the case. I check this report at least twice a week for my main sites.

One thing to know: Google limits the number of indexing requests you can make per day. The exact limit isn’t published, but from my testing, it’s somewhere around 10 to 12 requests per day per property. If you’re publishing more than that daily, you’ll need to prioritize your most important pages and rely on sitemaps for the rest.

Submitting a Sitemap to Google

The URL Inspection tool is great for individual pages. But if you’re running a WordPress site with hundreds or thousands of pages, you need sitemaps working in the background too. Think of sitemaps as the automated version of URL submission.

An XML sitemap is a file that lists every important URL on your site. It tells Google what pages exist, when they were last updated, and how often they change. Google reads this file regularly and uses it to decide what to crawl next.

How to Submit Your Sitemap in Search Console

If you haven’t submitted your sitemap yet, here’s how:

1. Log into Google Search Console

2. Click “Sitemaps” in the left sidebar

3. Enter your sitemap URL (usually yoursite.com/sitemap_index.xml or yoursite.com/sitemap.xml)

4. Click “Submit”

Google will start processing your sitemap immediately. You can check back in a day or two to see the status. It should show “Success” with the number of discovered URLs.

You only need to submit your sitemap once. After that, Google rechecks it automatically. But I still go in and resubmit after major site changes, like adding 20+ new pages at once or restructuring my URL hierarchy. It doesn’t hurt anything, and it gives Google a nudge to recrawl the file.

WordPress Sitemap Setup

If you’re on WordPress (and most of my readers are), your SEO plugin handles sitemaps automatically. I use Rank Math on most of my sites in 2026, and it generates sitemaps without any extra configuration.

Rank Math creates a sitemap index at yoursite.com/sitemap_index.xml with separate sitemaps for posts, pages, categories, and other post types. Yoast SEO does the same thing. Both work fine. The important thing is that your sitemap updates automatically when you publish new content. Both Rank Math and Yoast handle this out of the box.

One mistake I see often: people install multiple SEO plugins and end up with competing sitemaps. Pick one plugin. Stick with it. If you’re using Rank Math, make sure Yoast is deactivated and deleted, not just deactivated. Leftover plugin files can cause conflicts that mess up your sitemaps.

Sitemap Tips That Actually Matter

Keep your sitemaps clean. Only include pages you actually want indexed. I see sites with sitemaps containing tag archives, author pages, and attachment pages that add zero value to search results. Exclude those in your SEO plugin settings.

For larger sites, break your sitemap into smaller files. Most SEO plugins do this automatically, creating separate sitemaps for posts, pages, and taxonomies. Google can process sitemaps with up to 50,000 URLs or 50MB uncompressed, but smaller sitemaps get processed faster in my experience.

Update your sitemap’s lastmod dates accurately. If you update an old post, the lastmod date should change. This signals Google to recrawl that specific URL. I’ve seen sites where the lastmod dates never change, even after major content updates. Google eventually stops trusting those dates and crawls less frequently. Rank Math handles this correctly by default, updating the lastmod whenever you edit and republish a post.

Ping Services and Indexing APIs

Beyond Search Console and sitemaps, there are a few other tools that can help Google discover your content faster. Some are more useful than others, and I’ll be honest about which ones actually move the needle.

Google Indexing API

The Google Indexing API is designed for sites with frequently changing content, like job postings and live streams. Google officially supports it for JobPosting and BroadcastEvent schema types. But here’s the reality: many SEOs use it for regular blog content too, and it works.

I’ve tested the Indexing API on several WordPress sites using the IndexNow/Indexing API plugin by Rank Math. Pages submitted through the API consistently get crawled within 1 to 4 hours. That’s dramatically faster than the URL Inspection tool’s 24 to 72 hour window.

The catch? Google’s documentation says the API is only for specific content types. Using it for regular blog posts technically goes against the intended use. Google could change the rules anytime. So I use it as a bonus, not my primary method. My workflow: submit via URL Inspection tool first, then let the Indexing API plugin handle the background ping.

IndexNow Protocol

IndexNow is a protocol supported by Bing, Yandex, and a growing list of search engines. As of 2026, Google still hasn’t officially adopted IndexNow, but they’ve been “evaluating” it for years now. I wouldn’t hold your breath.

That said, if you use Rank Math or Yoast, both support IndexNow out of the box. It’s free to enable and helps with Bing indexing instantly. I’ve had pages show up in Bing search results within 10 minutes of publishing when using IndexNow. Even if Google isn’t participating yet, faster Bing indexing is a nice bonus.

Social Sharing for Discovery

This one surprises people. Sharing your URL on social media platforms like X (Twitter), LinkedIn, and Facebook can speed up Google’s discovery of your page. Google crawls these platforms constantly. When your URL appears on a high-authority domain, it gets picked up faster.

I always share new posts on X within minutes of publishing. It’s not a direct indexing method, but I’ve noticed pages I share socially tend to get indexed 12 to 24 hours faster than pages I don’t share. Could be coincidence. But it costs nothing and takes 30 seconds, so I keep doing it.

RSS Feeds and Aggregators

Your WordPress RSS feed (yoursite.com/feed/) is another way Google discovers content. Google’s crawlers regularly check RSS feeds for new content. Make sure your feed is working properly and includes your full list of recent posts.

You can also submit your RSS feed to aggregators like Feedly. These platforms pull your content and create additional backlinks that Google follows. It’s not a primary indexing strategy, but it adds another discovery path. I include my RSS feed URL in Google Search Console alongside my sitemap. Every little bit helps.

How Long Does Indexing Actually Take?

This is the question everyone asks. And the honest answer is: it depends. But I can give you real numbers from my sites.

For an established site (200+ posts, publishing 2 to 4 times per week, domain age 3+ years), pages submitted via URL Inspection typically get indexed within 24 to 48 hours. Using the Indexing API on top of that, I’ve seen pages indexed in as little as 2 hours.

For a newer site (under 50 posts, domain age less than 6 months), expect 3 to 10 days even with manual submission. Google is cautious with new domains. It needs to build trust before it crawls your site frequently. I had a client launch a brand new site in January 2025. Their first 20 posts took an average of 8 days to get indexed. By post 100, the average was down to 2 days. Now in 2026, their posts typically index within 24 hours.

Factors That Speed Up Indexing

Your publishing frequency matters more than most people realize. Sites that publish consistently (at least 2 to 3 times per week) build a crawling rhythm with Google. Googlebot learns your schedule and comes back regularly. I’ve seen this firsthand. When I publish daily for a month, my crawl stats in Search Console show Googlebot visiting 3 to 4 times per day. When I slow down to once a week, visits drop to every other day.

Internal linking also plays a huge role. When you publish a new post, link to it from 2 to 3 existing posts that are already indexed. This gives Googlebot a direct path to your new content. I always add internal links from relevant, high-traffic pages. It’s one of the simplest things you can do, and it consistently speeds up discovery.

Domain authority and crawl budget are connected. Higher authority sites get a bigger crawl budget, meaning Google is willing to crawl more pages more often. You can’t directly control your crawl budget, but you can avoid wasting it. Remove or noindex thin pages, fix crawl errors, and keep your site structure clean.

Factors That Slow Down Indexing

Thin content is the biggest killer. If Google crawls your page and finds 200 words of generic text, it’s not going to prioritize indexing it. I’ve had pages with over 3,000 words of original content index in hours, while 300-word pages on the same site sat in “discovered, currently not indexed” for weeks.

Server speed matters too. If Googlebot tries to crawl your site and your server responds slowly, Google reduces crawl frequency. Keep your server response time under 200ms. I use Cloudflare in front of all my sites and optimize my server configuration to keep response times between 50ms and 150ms.

Duplicate content confuses Google. If you have multiple URLs serving the same content (HTTP vs. HTTPS, www vs. non-www, trailing slash vs. no trailing slash), Google wastes crawl budget trying to figure out which version to index. Set up proper redirects and canonical tags to consolidate.

Troubleshooting Common Indexing Problems

You submitted your URL. You waited a week. It’s still not indexed. Now what? Here are the most common problems I see and how to fix them.

I deal with indexing issues on client sites every week. Over 18 years, I’ve probably debugged thousands of indexing problems. Most of them fall into a handful of categories.

“Discovered, Currently Not Indexed”

This is the most frustrating status in Search Console. It means Google knows your page exists but hasn’t bothered to crawl it yet. Google found the URL (probably from your sitemap or internal links) but decided other pages were higher priority.

The fix: improve the page’s perceived quality signals. Add more original content. Build 2 to 3 internal links from high-performing pages. Share the URL on social media. Then resubmit via URL Inspection. In most cases, this moves the page from “discovered” to “indexed” within a week.

If the page still won’t index after 2 to 3 weeks, honestly evaluate the content. Is it thin? Is it covering a topic you already covered on another page? Google might be choosing not to index it because it doesn’t add enough value. I’ve had pages stuck in this status for months that indexed within 24 hours after I doubled the word count and added original screenshots.

“Crawled, Currently Not Indexed”

This one is trickier. Google crawled the page, read the content, and decided not to index it. That’s a quality signal problem. Google essentially said, “I saw it. I don’t think it’s worth including in my index.”

The fix is more aggressive. Rewrite the content to be more original and useful. Add data, examples, screenshots, or video. Make sure the page isn’t too similar to another page on your site or a competing page that’s already ranking. I typically rewrite 50% to 70% of the content on pages with this status. After the rewrite, I resubmit and usually see indexing within 3 to 5 days.

Noindex Tag Issues

This one catches people more often than you’d think. A stray noindex tag in your page’s HTML tells Google explicitly not to index the page. Check your SEO plugin settings for the specific post or page. In Rank Math, go to the post editor, click the Rank Math tab, and check the “Advanced” section. Make sure “Robots Meta” isn’t set to “noindex.”

Also check your theme. Some WordPress themes add noindex tags to certain templates. I found one client’s entire blog archive was set to noindex because their theme developer added it to the archive.php template. A quick code review saved months of lost traffic.

Robots.txt Blocking

If your robots.txt file blocks Googlebot from crawling certain URL paths, those pages won’t get indexed. Check your robots.txt at yoursite.com/robots.txt and make sure it’s not blocking the URLs you want indexed.

A common WordPress issue: after migrating from staging to production, the robots.txt still contains “Disallow: /” which blocks everything. I see this at least once a month with new client sites. It takes 2 seconds to fix but can cost months of indexing if nobody catches it. In WordPress, go to Settings > Reading and make sure “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” is unchecked.

My Complete URL Submission Workflow

After 18+ years of doing this, I’ve got a repeatable system that works. Here’s exactly what I do every time I publish a new post on any of my WordPress sites.

Within 5 minutes of publishing, I open Google Search Console and submit the URL using the URL Inspection tool. This takes 15 seconds. Then I check that the page appears in my XML sitemap. I pull up my sitemap URL in a browser and search for the new URL. If it’s there, great. If not, something is wrong with my SEO plugin configuration.

Next, I share the post on X and LinkedIn. Not just for social traffic, but because it creates additional discovery paths for Google. I also add 2 to 3 internal links from existing high-traffic posts to the new post. This is the single most underrated indexing tactic. I open my top 5 most-visited posts in the same topic area and add a contextual link to the new article.

For critical pages (money pages, product pages, landing pages), I also use the Google Indexing API through Rank Math’s integration. This is overkill for regular blog posts, but for pages where every hour of delay costs money, it’s worth the extra step.

I track indexing status in a simple spreadsheet. URL, publish date, submission date, and indexed date. This lets me spot patterns. If a certain category of posts consistently takes longer to index, I know I need to investigate. Over the past year, my average time-to-index across all sites is 31 hours. That number used to be 6 days before I built this workflow.

Frequently Asked Questions

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Here’s what to do right now: set up Google Search Console if you haven’t already. Verify your site. Submit your sitemap. And every time you publish a new post, spend 15 seconds submitting the URL through the URL Inspection tool. It’s the single smallest effort-to-impact ratio in SEO. I’ve done this thousands of times across hundreds of sites, and it consistently cuts indexing time by 70% or more. Your content can’t rank if Google doesn’t know it exists. Stop waiting and start submitting.