How to get a new website indexed by Google and Bing fast

To get a new website indexed fast, verify it in Google Search Console, submit an XML sitemap, request indexing for your few most important pages with the URL Inspection tool, and link to every page from somewhere Google can already reach. For Bing and the engines that share its signals, set up IndexNow so each new or changed URL is announced the moment it goes live. Done together, most new sites see their first pages indexed within days rather than weeks, though no one can guarantee a date.

How does Google find and index a new site?

Google indexes in three stages: it discovers a URL (from a link, a sitemap or a request), crawls it, then decides whether the page is worth storing in its index. A new site struggles at the first stage because nothing links to it yet, and at the third because it has no track record. Google is candid that it is in no hurry: its page on asking Google to recrawl says “crawling can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks.”

So “fast” means removing every reason for delay that is under your control. Here is the order we would do it in on launch day.

Step by step: how do I get a new site indexed by Google?

1. Make sure nothing blocks indexing. Remove any noindex left over from staging, check that robots.txt does not say Disallow: /, and confirm pages return a 200 status. Our free robots.txt tester and SEO checker catch both.
2. Verify the site in Google Search Console. At search.google.com/search-console, add a Domain property (verified with a DNS TXT record, and covers http, https, www and every subdomain) or a URL prefix property (verified with an HTML file, a meta tag, Google Analytics or Tag Manager). Domain properties are better if you can edit DNS.
3. Publish and submit an XML sitemap. Most platforms generate one at /sitemap.xml. In Search Console open Sitemaps, paste the address and choose Submit. Also add a Sitemap: line to robots.txt so other engines find it.
4. Request indexing for the pages that matter most. Paste the homepage URL into the inspection bar at the top of Search Console, then choose Request indexing. Repeat for your main service, product or category pages. Do not request every URL.
5. Link every page from a page Google already knows. Navigation, the homepage and category pages should reach everything within a few clicks. Orphan pages are the most common reason a new page sits undiscovered.
6. Get a few real links from elsewhere. A Google Business Profile, your social profiles and genuine directory listings give crawlers more ways in.
7. Watch the Page indexing report. After a few days, open Pages under Indexing in Search Console and read the reasons for pages that are not indexed.

What does Request indexing actually do?

It puts the URL into a priority crawl queue after a quick check. Google's URL Inspection help page says indexing “typically takes only a day or so, but can take much longer in some cases,” and that “submitting a request does not guarantee that the page will appear in the Google Index.” If the live test finds the page is not indexable, for example because of a noindex, the button will not work at all.

Google does not publish the quota. It only says “there is a daily limit to how many index requests you can submit,” and its recrawl page adds that “requesting a recrawl multiple times for the same URL won't get it crawled any faster.” Treat it as a tool for your top ten pages, not a substitute for a sitemap.

Do sitemaps still matter, and should I ping Google?

Sitemaps matter; pinging does not. Google announced in June 2023 that its sitemaps ping endpoint was going away, so tools that still “ping Google” are doing nothing. Google's sitemap documentation lists the ways that work: the Sitemaps report in Search Console, a Sitemap: line in robots.txt, or the Search Console API.

Two details from that page are worth knowing. A sitemap is “merely a hint,” not an instruction. And Google uses lastmod only when it is reliably accurate, meaning the date of the last significant change to the content, not today's date stamped on every URL. A single sitemap can hold up to 50,000 URLs or 50MB uncompressed.

User-agent: *
Allow: /

Sitemap: https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml

What is IndexNow and which search engines use it?

IndexNow is an open protocol for telling search engines that a URL was added, changed or deleted, instead of waiting for them to recrawl. According to indexnow.org, it is supported by Microsoft Bing, Naver, Seznam.cz, Yandex and Yep. The participating engines agree that “submitted URLs will be automatically shared with all other participating search engines,” so one request reaches all of them. Google is not on the list.

How do I set up IndexNow?

Many platforms do it for you: check your CMS, SEO plugin or CDN settings for an IndexNow option before building anything. To do it yourself, follow the IndexNow documentation:

1. Create a key. It must be 8 to 128 characters of letters, numbers and dashes, for example a 32-character hex string.
2. Publish the key file. Host a UTF-8 text file named <your-key>.txt at the root of your site, containing the key. This proves the site is yours.
3. Send the URLs. For one URL, a GET request to https://api.indexnow.org/indexnow?url=...&key=... is enough. For many, POST JSON:

   POST https://api.indexnow.org/indexnow
   Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
   
   {
     "host": "www.example.com",
     "key": "4f9a1c2be0d84c3fa7b2d6e1c9a8f305",
     "urlList": [
       "https://www.example.com/",
       "https://www.example.com/services/water-heaters"
     ]
   }

4. Read the response. 200 means accepted; 202 means received while the key is being validated; 403 means the key file could not be found or does not match; 422 means a URL is not on that host; 429 means slow down.
5. Ping only on real changes. Submit when a page is published, meaningfully updated or deleted, not on every deploy. A single request can carry up to 10,000 URLs.

SEO Rank Fixer has this built in: it creates a key, tells you where to put the key file, checks it, and then submits your site's URLs to IndexNow (at most once a day per site), and can submit your sitemap to Bing Webmaster Tools if you connect a Bing API key. It reads Search Console every night, so you can watch pages move from discovered to indexed.

How do I get indexed by Bing?

The fastest route is to import from Google. Bing's import announcement describes it: sign in to Bing Webmaster Tools, open My Sites, choose Import, sign in with the Google account that owns your Search Console property and allow access. Bing lists your verified sites with their sitemaps, and the ones you import are verified automatically.

After that, Bing's Submit URLs tool lets you push pages by hand. When Bing raised the limit in 2019, it said sites could submit up to 10,000 URLs a day, with each site's quota set by signals such as its verified age and impressions; you can see yours on the Submit URLs page. Being in Bing matters beyond Bing itself, since Microsoft's Copilot and other services build on its index.

My pages are still not indexed. What now?

The Page indexing report tells you why. The two statuses new sites see most often mean different things:

Patience is part of it. A site with ten good pages and a few real links usually gets them indexed; a site that launches with five thousand thin pages often sees most of them parked in “Discovered” for months. Publish fewer, better pages first.

Does indexing affect AI search too?

Yes. Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode draw on pages that are in Google's index and eligible to show a snippet, and ChatGPT and Claude run their own search crawlers that need robots.txt access. Being indexed is the first step toward being cited. For the next steps, see how to show up in AI Overviews and AI Mode, check that your CDN is not blocking AI crawlers, and read the GEO guide. New to the terms? The glossary has short definitions.