Why Google isn’t showing your updated website straight away
Have you engaged a Brisbane web design company to create your new business website? Well, one myth that we need to put to bed is that once your website has been launched on the internet, that it will instantly be picked up by Google and all pages found. This process is called “indexing”.
It’s unlikely that you’ll be indexed and appear immediately, regardless of the cost of your website or the experience of your website management company.
As a business owner, it’s good to know how Google operates and why it can take so long for your site to be indexed, particularly if you Google your business name or keywords and your updated site is nowhere to be found!
Can you speed up your site’s indexing?
The short answer is maybe, but there are no guarantees. The Google “bots” have to crawl the entire internet, discovering new websites, new pages, posts, images, files and a whole lot more as well.
However, it’s a not a real-time process for Google; their “bots” only look for new websites periodically. So even though we submit your website address to Google at the time of launch (to speed up the indexing process), it can take anything from a few days to a few weeks before Google indexes your website. Nothing more can be done by anyone.
This lengthy timeframe can apply to both new and revamped websites. So even if your domain name has been live for many years and you’re simply adding new content, images or posts to your site — or even redesigning your website completely — you can’t guarantee that Google will instantly crawl your site and index the changes.
How to see which pages are indexed
You can check which pages of your website have already been indexed by Google by going to “google.com.au” and searching for “site:mydomain.com.au” (replacing “mydomain.com.au” with your own website address) to see a list of the indexed pages.
What about keyword searches?
Another problem business owners often encounter is that following the launch of their new or revamped website, they not only expect their site to be indexed quickly, but they also expect it to be found easily using certain search phrases — known as keywords or keyphrases.
The first misconception here is the same as outlined above: if Google doesn’t know about your website, then it doesn’t matter what you search for, it won’t show up.
The second is that even if your website has been fully indexed already, your website may not rank well enough to appear high in the search results. Ranking on the first page of Google takes time and effort, so it’s unreasonable to think that your newly updated website will jump to the top of page one – that’s simply not how it works.
If you need to increase your rankings in the search engines, it’s a good idea to chat to your web developer or website management company about ongoing optimisation of your website (SEO / search engine optimisation).
Summary
Knowing the above, once your website is published, give it a week and then search for your business name in Google. If you still don’t see it, use the search example above to find out whether you’re indexed. If you are, but you’re not coming up high in the search results when searching for products or services that your business offers, then you’ll definitely need an SEO specialist to help improve your rankings. We offer a free SEO audit as well, if you just want to get an idea of where you currently stand with your online presence.
