- Fetch!
Historically, Google has done a good job of finding web pages, crawling them and indexing them. However, the system isn’t quite perfect and there are still valuable and time-sensitive web pages that it misses. For that, it introduced XML sitemaps and the public Submit URL page to map the web better.
Now, Google is introducing a handy new function in Webmaster Tools to up the ante. Enter the Fetch as Googlebot function. It can be found under your Diagnostics menu and you can submit both home and internal pages that have been verified as yours. Google then checks for a server response for the URL and if it’s successful, you’ll be given a choice between two action items.
The first option is to submit the URL individually. This can be done 50 times in a single week and Google says it speeds up the process of consideration for indexing. Alternatively, you can submit the URL and all the pages that are linked to the page it represents. This can be done 10 times in a week.
Google recommends using Fetch if you’re launching new pages, if you’ve got breaking news or if you’ve updated some pages that are already in the index.
Do keep in mind that getting both internal and external links to the page that you want to get indexed are still the best ways to ensure inclusion. Getting linked to also gives the page more ranking power for better search engine visibility.
Have you tested Fetch? What did you think about it? Let me know in the comments section below.
