How to Get Google to Recrawl Your Site? (5 Ways to Try)

Googlebot is a tireless workhorse that continuously crawls the web, looking for new pages to add to Google’s index.

With trillions of pages on the internet, it might take the web crawler some time to revisit some websites. It might even overlook some pages entirely. When this happens, the sensible thing to do is ask Google directly to crawl your page.

Whether you published new content, updated existing ones, or resolved technical SEO glitches, prompting Googlebot to conduct a recrawl can help Google recognize these changes faster. This ensures your effort doesn’t go unnoticed and your pages stay competitive in SERPs.

This resource looks at five actionable ways to encourage Google to recrawl your site and reflect its latest updates.

What Factors Influence Google’s Recrawling Process

As with other search engines, Google tends to be a little discriminatory when crawling the web. Some websites get visited more often; others might take a while before Googlebot notices. 

Google often takes a conservative approach when crawling pages, as it reportedly visits billions of URLs daily. This is called “crawl budget,” or the time and resources spent crawling a website. 

Therefore, it stands to reason that Google will prioritize some websites over others in its crawling (or recrawling) activity. 

Google’s Martin Splitt and Alexis Sanders, Senior Account Manager at Merkle, discuss the concept of crawl budget in detail in this video:

So, what influences the search engine’s dedicated crawl budget? Two things:

1. Crawl capacity limit
2. Crawl demand

The crawl capacity limit refers to how many requests Googlebot can make on a website without overloading the servers. This value can go up or down depending on the status of the servers. If they slow down, the number of pages that Google requests, fetches, and renders will be fewer. 

Crawl demand, on the other hand, is dependent on several factors, including:

• Website size
• Update frequency
• Page quality
• Relevance

Naturally, Google will crawl bigger websites that frequently publish content, such as news sites or active blogs. 

On the other hand, websites that are generally static or do not have frequent changes implemented will have a lower demand for crawling.

If you want Google to visit often, host your website on a reliable server and actively publish new content. But if that doesn’t work, here are five workarounds you can try: 

5 Ways to Get Google to Crawl Your Site

1. Request indexing via Google Search Console

Google Search Console is not only for measuring sitewide performance and analytics. You can also use Google’s tool to request crawling and, by extension, indexing. 

One of the easiest ways to ask Google to recrawl a page on your site is by using the URL inspection tool on GSC. 

Log into your GSC account and select the desired property from the dropdown on the upper lefthand corner.

Click the URL Inspection button from the sidebar menu or click the search bar at the top:

Paste your target link, preferably a newly published content or a recently updated page, then press enter.

If the page is already indexed, GSC will say the URL is on Google, as shown below:

Otherwise, it will read that the URL is not on Google, along with the reason as to why:

Click the Request Indexing button to request a recrawl.

This should prompt Google to take a look at the page to check for updates.

2. Submit your sitemap to Google

Another way to get your pages on Google’s crawling list is by submitting a sitemap on Google Search Console. 

Here is an example of a sitemap:

Start by creating your sitemap using an XML format. There are three ways you can do this, which we discussed in detail in our dedicated resource on how to submit a sitemap to Google:

1. Using a free online sitemap generator
2. Installing a CMS plugin or extension
3. Creating the sitemap manually 

Google will prioritize recrawling pages listed in sitemaps with higher <priority> scores, which are between 1 and 0. 

For instance, if a blog post is assigned a <priority> score of 0.9 and the About Us section has a score of 0.2, Google will visit the former more frequently than the latter.

Once your XML sitemap file (or sitemap index file) is ready, upload it to your website’s root directory. 

Then, open Google Search Console and select the correct domain property. Locate the Sitemaps tab on the sidebar menu under the Indexing dropdown.

Paste the sitemap URL in the “Add a new sitemap” section and click submit.

After Google has processed them, submitted sitemaps will read “Success” under the Status column, as shown below:

3. Create internal links to the target page

To crawl a page, Google must first discover the URL via other known pages. This process is aptly called URL discovery.

Googlebot primarily relies on internal links to discover new pages, which serve as bridges that connect one page to another. 

Without internal links, Google cannot physically access a page unless there are alternative pathways, such as:

1. Fetch the URL using a sitemap (as discussed above)
2. Discover the page via backlinks (more on this later) 

The absolute absence of inbound internal links to a page renders it detached from the main site structure. These are called “orphan pages,” which rarely get crawled and indexed by Google.

Creating internal links to your target page increases the chances of Google discovering that page. This means Googlebot will have repeated opportunities to crawl a URL. 

While you can create internal links manually, the process can be a little time-consuming.

SEO tools, like LinkStorm, automate this process to help site owners optimize their internal linking campaigns without the hassle. Here’s a quick demonstration of how it works:

After LinkStorm has crawled your website, the tool uses AI and semantic analysis to find relevant connections across your content.

You will find them listed on the tool’s Opportunities tab, as seen below:

Just paste a snippet of code on your website. After this, you can accept or reject suggested internal links with one click, and the link will be embedded into your content in real time.

This streamlines the internal linking process, as site owners won’t have to go through multiple pages looking for relevant interlinking opportunities manually.

4. Build backlinks to the target page

If you want Google to crawl a specific page, building backlinks pointing to that page is another effective solution. Like internal links, backlinks are alternative pathways for Google to crawl your content.

In addition to that, Google also treats backlinks as “votes of confidence.” This means that when external pages link back to your site, they essentially endorse your content to Google and encourage their user base to visit your website. Backlinks become increasingly more valuable when they come from reputable websites. These links transfer SEO value called link juice to the target page, which increases its perceived authority in Google’s eyes.

Google often treats a page as high-quality and relevant when it receives link juice from multiple authoritative sources. This will give Googlebot more reasons to keep recrawling the page to stay ahead of content updates.

While backlinks are generally good, building them indiscriminately is not advisable. Backlinks can have a double-edged effect on your website, harming its SEO. Therefore, monitoring backlinks is equally as important. 

You can do this in two ways: 

• Using Google Search Console
• Using a backlink-monitoring SEO tool

Click the Links tab from the sidebar menu within Google Search Console.

Select the Top Linked Pages and the Top Linked Sites under the External Links section.

This will show which pages on your website are linked most and what websites are pointing to them. However, GSC only shows the root domain, not the specific URL where the backlink originates.

To fully discover the specific external pages pointing to your pages, you can use dedicated backlink monitoring tools like Linkody. Aside from specifying the backlinks, Linkody also includes essential metrics, such as: 

• Date when the link was discovered
• Anchor text used
• Rel attribute
• Linking page’s Domain Authority
• Linking page’s Spam Score

With the help of backlinks and backlink monitoring tools, you can distinguish good backlinks from harmful ones. Then, disavow spammy backlinks to prevent Google from penalizing your website for link spam. 

5.  Partner with trustworthy indexers

When you’ve exhausted all possible solutions in getting your site recrawled, it might be time to work with indexers. 

Indexers, also known as Google Indexing Tools, refer to specialized service providers that speed up the process of crawling and indexing pages.

These indexing tools use one of two ways to signal to Google that a page needs crawling:

1. They use Google’s indexing API to send requests
2. They create temporary backlinks to pages until Google recrawls or indexes them

Indexers use a highly technical and coding-intensive process, making their SEO efforts invaluable. This is especially helpful if you need a quick index after implementing minor changes to your website. 

If you’re interested, we curated the seven best indexers to work with if you wish to appear on Google fast! Feel free to check that resource out and discover their respective proprietary processes. 

Make Sure Your Recrawled Pages Stay Indexed!

Crawling and indexing are two inseparable concepts. After all, we want a page crawled to get it indexed or re-indexed by Google.

However, even if a page makes it into Google’s search results, it is not guaranteed to stay indexed. Monitoring the indexing status of pages ensures they remain on Google’s radar and helps you resolve indexing problems as soon as they are detected.

This is where IndexCheckr comes in.

IndexCheckr offers an intuitive interface to help you track the status of pages on Google.

The tool automates monitoring if pages are indexed, so you won’t have to check manually. It can be configured to track the indexing status according to your desired frequency. The tool will also send email alerts to site owners for any changes. 

Interested?

Try IndexCheckr now for FREE—no credit card requirements, no strings attached.

Happy indexing!