Recently, one of our readers asked if it is possible for Google to recrawl specific URLs. If your website is new, it will take some time for Google to crawl and display new pages or changes in search results. In this article, we'll show you how to ask Google to recrawl your WordPress site's URLs.
When you add pages and posts to your WordPress site, Google will take its time to crawl these new links. Google requires the same amount of time to crawl the updated URLs of your WordPress site.
When you manually ask Google to recrawl your URLs, then it will put your new link in the queue to get indexed by Google. A Google search bot will start recrawling your links one by one and displaying them in search results.
Some of the common reasons for asking Google to recrawl URLs are:
For the first two options mentioned above, you can automate this process using XML sitemaps. Google is pretty good at indexing websites because that's their business.
However, we have seen specific pages disappear from Google (for no reason). Sometimes just asking Google to crawl again will make the page appear right away.
With that said, let's look at how to ask Google to recrawl your WordPress site's URLs and display them in search results.
First you need to get your site listed on Google and then Google will start crawling your URLs. However, you can also ask Google to re-crawl your new links for the cases we discussed above.
You can follow the steps below to ask Google to recrawl your WordPress site URLs.
The URL Inspection Tool is available in the new and updated Google Search Console (formerly known as Google Webmaster Tools). This tool helps you identify problems related to your URLs and offers solutions to get your links indexed in Google.
It will also help you fix common WordPress errors for your URLs and other URL indexing issues.
In the new Google search console, you must select your property or website to check the status of the URL index.
Note: If you don't have a website listed in the Google Webmaster Tool, you must first add it as a new property to proceed with the URL Inspection Tool.
After selecting the property, you need to go to the URL inspection tool on the left menu and add your URL in the search field you want to inspect.
It will fetch the data about your URL and display it in the Google search console dashboard.
If your URL is found in Google, you will see a success message with the useful information about your link. You can expand the results and see if there are any other issues to resolve. If not, you'll see Google's submission request to re-crawl and re-index your URL.
However, if the link is not in Google, then it will show you the errors and a possible solution to get your URL indexed in Google.
You can resolve the issues and inspect the URL again until you get the success message. After that, a request to re-crawl your URL is initiated. Just repeat the same thing for all the URLs you want Google to crawl again.
If you are still unsure about your URLs being indexed by Google, you can simply submit an updated XML sitemap with your new URLs to Google Webmaster Tools. Sitemaps are the fastest way to get your new URLs indexed in Google.
For this step, we recommend using the Yoast SEO plugin, which includes flexible options to correctly configure your XML sitemaps in WordPress.
In your WordPress admin area, you should go to SEO »General page. In the Features section, you need to turn on the XML sitemaps setting.
Don't forget to click on the Save changes button.
You can then view the updated sitemap by clicking the question mark icon next to the XML Sitemaps header. If your new links are visible in this sitemap file, then you can go ahead and submit it to Google Webmaster Tool.
To submit XML sitemaps, you must visit the new Google Search Console and go to Sitemaps in the menu on the left. Simply add your XML sitemap link and click Submit button.
This updated sitemap will prompt Googlebots to quickly retrieve your new URLs and display them in search results.
Note: you only have to upload the sitemap once. Google pulls up your sitemap regularly, and will add updated posts quickly once your sitemaps are added.
We hope this article helped you learn how to ask Google to recrawl your WordPress site URLs. You may also want to see our ultimate guide on how to improve WordPress SEO.
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