Over time Google.com will re-crawl and index the content on your website. The only problem is that this can often take weeks, months, or even longer before you see correct search results for your site. However, Google does provide a way for you to speed up this process by using Google Webmaster Tools. By following the steps below you can usually get your site re-indexed with accurate search results within 10 days or less.
Google Webmaster Tools
Create a Google Account
- If your team has not done so already, you should create a free Google Account.
- We recommend using a generic email such as “webmaster@yoursite.ca.gov” instead of using individual email accounts. This way multiple members of your team can login and if staff leave your agency, the Google account will remain.
Verify Your Site with Google Webmaster Tools
- Once you have created your Google account, the next step is to verify your site using Google Webmaster Tools.
- You will need to do this in order to submit site maps for indexing.
Submit an XML Sitemap with Google Webmaster Tools
- While Google will automatically crawl and index your site, the recommended course of action for quicker results is to submit an XML sitemap.
- Once submitted, your updated results will show up on both Google.com and your individual GSS engine within axp 10-12 days.
Remove URLs
- You can remove pages from search results via a removal request.
- Once submitted, it will remove the pages from index in apx a few days.
Please Note:Once pages are removed from Google’s main index using webmaster tools, they will also stop serving in GSS. Complete removal of pages may take up to 60-90 days, but it will stop serving in search results much before that.
Google Site Search (GSS)
Once you have created a Google account as noted above, I can grant you admin access to your GSS engine which will allow you to perform several functions with your search engine. If you would like to do this, please send me the email associated with your Google account.
On-Demand Indexing and Removal
- You can submit up to 200 pages for immediate indexing and up to 20 pages for removal through the GSS engine.
- URL’s can be submitted via their individual paths or an XML sitemap.
- If you submit via an XML sitemap, only the first 200 paths will be indexed or the first 20 flagged for removal.
- Once submitted, the new search results will show up on your GSS engine in apx 24 hrs.
Please Note:On-demand indexing quota keeps on releasing every few weeks. Once it is released, you can reuse this feature to index more pages in this search engine. On-demand indexing is specific to GSS and will not impact Google.com results. However over a period of times, these on-demand indexed pages will be crawled and indexed using Google’s regular indexing process and both the indexed will be in sync. At that time these pages will be served in Google.com results as well.
“Sites to Exclude”
- You can specify URL paths to be excluded from GSS results immediately.
- However, this will only exclude the URLs from GSS search results but it won’t submit any removal requests to remove pages from neither the GSS nor the Google.com index.
- To remove pages from index, you need to follow the above guidelines only.
XML Sitemap Generation Software
There are a variety of tools on the market for generating XML sitemaps. However, each agency will need to research and test which solution works best for them. At OTech, we currently use Inspyder Sitemap Creator ($39.95). We have also used https://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ which is free up to 500 pages or their unlimited version ($19.99).