Google says crawling and reindexing a new or changed URL (Uniform Resource Locator), the address of an individual web page, can take a few days to a few weeks. Crawling is the search bot's visit to the page. Nobody can promise an exact time, and repeating an indexing request in Search Console does not speed up the process.

On a new small website, Google may discover the homepage quickly while adding other pages to its index at different times.

What does indexing actually mean?

There are several stages:

  1. Google discovers the URL.
  2. Googlebot visits, or crawls, the page.
  3. Google processes the page's content.
  4. Google may add the page to its index.
  5. An indexed page can then appear in relevant searches.

So “Google knows the URL” and “the page appears in search results” are different things.

Can you speed up indexing?

You cannot tell Google to index a page on a particular day, but you can remove common obstacles.

At a minimum:

  • link to the new page from other pages on your site
  • add it to the sitemap
  • check that noindex is not blocking indexing
  • check that robots.txt or your CDN (Content Delivery Network) is not blocking Googlebot
  • inspect the URL in Search Console
  • request indexing once for an important new URL

Google explicitly says that repeatedly requesting indexing for the same URL does not make crawling faster.

When should you be concerned?

If a page has not appeared after a few days, that does not yet mean something is broken.

If weeks pass, check the following:

Google does not know the URL

The page may be disconnected from the rest of your site, with no links pointing to it. Add a normal internal link and make sure the URL is in your sitemap.

Google cannot access or index the page

A robots rule, noindex, a server error, a login requirement or a bot block can prevent crawling or indexing.

Google considers another URL the preferred version

Google may choose another address as the canonical: the preferred URL for the same or very similar content.

If identical or nearly identical content appears at several addresses, Google may group them together and select another URL as canonical.

The page does not offer enough distinct value

A technically indexable page does not automatically enter the index. Google does not guarantee indexing for every URL it discovers.

How do you check the actual status?

Use URL Inspection in Google Search Console.

It tells you much more than an ordinary Google search:

  • whether Google knows the URL
  • whether it is indexed
  • whether Google is allowed to crawl it
  • which canonical URL Google is using
  • when the page was last crawled

A site: search can give a quick indication, but Google recommends URL Inspection for troubleshooting an individual page.

What about changes to an existing page?

Changes to an older page may not appear in Google immediately.

Googlebot needs to revisit it, and Google's systems need to process the new content. Crawl frequency varies, so updates can take time to show.

For an important change, you can request indexing in Search Console. Even then, there is no exact deadline for the update to appear.

Indexed does not mean highly ranked

Understanding this difference saves a lot of unnecessary troubleshooting.

If Search Console says a URL is on Google but you cannot find it by searching for “plumber Helsinki”, indexing may be working perfectly. The page may simply not rank highly enough for that search to be easy to find.

Then you need to examine search intent, the page's content, competition and the structure of the whole site.

See also how to get your website on Google and why your website is not showing up on Google.

Source: Google Search Central, Ask Google to Recrawl Your URLs.