Transcript
Hey guys, welcome to another edition of the Zupo's SEO Talk and Tea.
Today's conversation: what is the request indexing tool? I want to talk about that today because the request indexing tool is a really important tool for very quick fixes on your site if you're having indexing concerns. And especially because of the request indexing tool in quarter four of 2020 was actually out of commission, but as of the Q1 of the new year, it is back in play and we're seeing it. So, I thought it'd be cool to film a video to explain what the request indexing tool even is. So, what we're having today, also for the tea, because this is Zupo's SEO Talk and Tea, is a green tea. The green tea is from the company Mei Leaf, who is probably my most favorite go-to brand when it comes to tea. But this is a Long Jing green tea. Let's go ahead and get brewing and get talking.
So, the request indexing tool is a tool that you can find in search console, and Google search console is a platform that is like a sister platform to analytics. But where analytics reports data about your website, search console, it also report data about your website, but its main purpose is to communicate with your site in Google through that platform. And one of the tools that they have is a request indexing tool. I'm not going to show you a live screen-share because the format of these videos is more talking to the camera, but you can usually find the request indexing tool by going into your search console properties, whichever website you're looking at, input a URL that you're particularly concerned about or want to look at. And then when you input the URL, a page will pop up telling you if the URL is indexed or not, and then on the bottom, it will say, "Request indexing."
What the request indexing button does is it will tell Google that you want to have the URL question indexed by Google, and this is really important because on one hand, when you're creating new pages, this can be a great way to expedite the discovery of your pages. Because sometimes when you're creating a webpage on your website, Google needs to be able to find it, and if your site is not optimized well, or the page is kind of hidden, it can be a little bit difficult or time consuming for Google to find your page, especially when maybe you're rolling out a new campaign and you're really antsy to get going. So, the request indexing tool is a really quick way to let Google know that the page is there and then that they can index it.
Second, another method that I really like the request indexing tool is when a page falls out of index. There are occasions when a website, for some reason, technical, a glitch, wrong implementation, a page will fall out of index, meaning that it will get removed off of Google. And if that page is one that's really important for your Google rankings, it is imperative that you get the page back up. So, the request indexing tool is one of the main ways that you can quickly make sure that you can get that page re-indexed. I will tell you a personal anecdote, in Q4 of 2020, we had one of our client's webpages that was really important for rankings fall out of index. It got de-indexed. And because it was Q4 of 2020, the request indexing tool was out of commission. Google was revamping it. I don't even know what they were doing. I think they were maintaining it or updating it. I'm not sure. So, we couldn't even use the request indexing tool, and therefore, we just had to wait for Google to recall the website to get to that URL. And it took about a week.
I had it happen again to me for a different client in Q1 of 2021, where a page fell out of index. And at that point, the tool was back, so we request index to that URL, and then the next morning, the URL was re-indexed and everything was fine. So, that's a good example of how the request indexing tool can really help you. I would heavily encourage you to use it whenever you create new pages. Whenever you want a page de-indexed, or if you have a page that's not indexed, or has fallen out of index, and you want to put it back in.
So, the request indexing tool is a great tool, especially for one-off URLs, or if you only have a handful. If you have hundreds of pages or a huge bulk of pages that you want to do request indexing, that would not be the greatest place to do that, request indexing tool, because that's more of a one-off. If you have a lot of URLs, it actually would probably be better to create a site map of those new URLs and then submit that site map to Google. That would also be, probably, better, because that would be a little bit more efficient than having to click 50 times request indexing.
So, hopefully that is something that you guys can take with you on your day-to-day. Again, it is a powerful tool that whenever I need indexing work done, or I need to figure out what's going on with certain page and the way it's displayed on Google, I will look into search console to make sure what's going on. And usually, request indexing is a great way to let them aware and expedite the process of getting that page reconsidered it and re-indexed.
All right, guys, if you found that video valuable, please like and subscribe, and I hope to see you again soon. Thanks, everybody.