Nudging Google to index your content

There is no more request indexing feature in the Google Search Console

Hello, and thanks for listening to SEO tips today.

Google has Temporarily Disabled the “Request Indexing” feature of the URL Inspection Tool.

In case you go to the Google Search Console and can’t use the “request indexing” feature, it’s now not there because it has been temporarily disabled. Here’s what Google has said about the feature:

 “In order to make some infrastructure changes. We expect it will return in the coming weeks.”

As a side note, if you’re heavily relying on the request indexing feature from Google, perhaps there are some issues with your content or the crawl control on your site.

Here are some other ideas around how to nudge Google to index your content:

• Have a clean XML sitemap with all of your 200 status, canonical, indexable URLs in it.
• Update your XML sitemap as you publish new content
• Have a launch plan for new content where you:
  • Share it on social media.
  • Have an embargo with the press (and lift it on launch date).
  • Have a pitch plan to drive links to the content.
  • Send a note to your email list to notify them of the new content.
  • Use a Facebook chatbot that delivers your content via RSS feed to your chatbot followers…
  • Launch a YouTube video that talks about the new content.
  • Talk about the new content on a podcast.

The ideas here to get visibility on your content are endless.

So that’s your tip for today – and FYI that the request indexing feature with Google is gone, but there are still ways you can budge Google to find and index your new content.

Thanks for listening. Come back tomorrow for another SEO tip.

Listen to the previous episode: March 2021: Only mobile content will be indexed

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