HOW TO REINDEX YOUR WEBSITE QUICKLY IN A SEARCH ENGINE

Paul Evison 15th March 2007

I have a problem.

"Obviously", as anyone who knows me is probably saying. But for once I’m not talking about my lack of girlfriend or money.

No, I have a problem common to many owners of websites. Just how do you get your website re-indexed by a search engine quickly? This process, left to its own devices, can sometimes take 3 - 6 months…

What is a Search Engine's Index?
A search engine will store a copy of your website in what's known as its index. Often its index will become out of date, holding old information, until it visits your website again and re-indexes your website.

Our client, Allstores Clothing, have this exact problem and I need to get their website re-indexed as quickly as I can so that some improvements we've made to the website, are reflected by the search engines.

What could we do?

Unfortunately we can't actually just demand that Google or Yahoo do what we say, when we say it. But one good way to speed this process up is to put a link (or a number of them) to the website in question, on another website that we know is trusted and frequently visited by the search engines.

In theory, the search engine will follow the link, find the new website (and new content) and add it to its index forthwith. Problem solved.

Hmmmmm, where could we find such a website? It’s not easy to source good links…

Ingeniously, as you may have already guessed, for Allstores Clothing I've decided to write an article about this problem, specifically referring to our client (with the all important link), and place it on our website (you’re reading it now).

Our website is trusted by Google and other search engines and we are visited and re-indexed on an almost daily basis. Therefore, by writing this article, I’m hoping that this is a quick and relatively easily solution to our original problem.

Today’s moral

This is just one of the ways in which we work for our clients. Sometimes there are no quick or easy answers to get what you want, but with a bit of clever thinking, we’ll find a solution for you.

Notes and Queries...

Great article,

Like the fact that you explained it and demonstrated it all in one. Great job. Our website, www.homesourcecustomhomes.com gets indexed every 3-4 days. My boss wants it to happen more but doesn't quite understand that we can't force google to do anything. Do you know if there is any official google documentation that states this as a fact?
Nathan Veer 10th September 2008
Hi Nathan

I think the closest thing you can find is in the Google support documentation, here.

There's not much more to go on, but there is a line in there about how you can't pay Google to spider your site faster, and to explain that spidering is just an automated process that can't be tweaked in individual circumstances.

Thanks for the feedback anyway - and I hope this helps!
Paul Carpenter 10th September 2008
Hmm, this is a good idea. For quite a while I just had a logo and 'Coming Soon' text on our domain, www.mirbit.com , while the site was being developed. We launched the site last week, and we have been trying to improve our SEO. Even with that 'coming soon' page up for so long, Google hasn't indexed us. MSN has, but the listing just shows the 'coming soon' text as the description, and hasn't been replaced/reindexed with the new content yet. I've submitted the url to each, along with sitemaps...but haven't made any progress. After reading this article, I'll definitely be trying to get some links on other pages to our site to try to speed up the process.

Thanks for the article! p.s. you should post an updated to this article, recapping the amount of success you had with this technique.
mark 1st October 2008
I've got a similar problem with www.rockymountains.com
I'm working on it and trying many options. The site has been revised and is in develpment. It has a long way to go but it keeps it alive and visitors from all over the world. www.rockymountains.com is a top name and sends visitors to many sites of interest.
Alan 14th October 2008
It is frustrating. I reworked my entire site www.sierrastitch.com and Google is still showing the old content. This is a nice solution. I have read that the more links your have out there the faster you get re indexed. Thanks for this.
Jim Schuett 7th November 2008
same problem i am having with my new site updates at http://www.tmc.edu.sg sheesh ....
BBC 20th November 2008
 
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