Since 14 October 2020, Google disabled its page actions feature in Search Console. This means that it's not possible to request (re)indexing anymore until future notice. But what can you do to speed up the indexing process of your website or webpages?
There are a few ways you could do to speed up the indexing processes for Google. Some of these methods are specific for the Google Search engine, while others are also valid for search engines like, for example, Bing or Yahoo.
Note: as of 22 December 2020, the "Request Indexing"-feature is back! Learn more on Twitter by Google Search Central.
If you have another method that could improve the time to index a page, please contact me on Twitter.
Submit a sitemap
With a sitemap you define all the pages on your website. This makes it easier for website to recognise changes (when you use the "lastmod" element) on your website.
Ping sitemap
It's possible to ping the search engines that you updated the sitemap, this can be done by sending a GET request to specific URLs. Here is a list of links you could use:
- Google: https://www.google.com/ping?sitemap=<link-to-sitemap>
- Bing: https://www.bing.com/ping?sitemap=<link-to-sitemap>
When you get a 200-statuscode from the request it means that you are fine and the sitemap is submitted to the search engine. Now you only have to wait and let the search engine process your (updated) sitemap.
Search Console submit
In Search Console it's also possible to submit a sitemap. After you submitted your sitemap it's also possible to see how your sitemap performs, you see a list of sitemap(s) and the found pages in the different sitemaps. When you click on the "see index coverage" icon you will see which pages are indexed and which aren't.
Want to learn more about sitemaps, take a look at Google Search Central.
Google Indexing API
Google made a tool for publishers to submit new and updated pages to its indexing process. This feature is called Google Indexing API.
The Indexing API can only be used to crawl "short-lived" pages, for example "JobPosting" or "BroadcastEvent". The main goal of the indexing API is to keep fresh content in the search results.
There are multiple ways of implementing the Google Indexing API into your website.
Note: Google recommends to always create and submit a sitemap for your website.
More methods to speedup the indexing process will be added soon...