Google Indexing, learn everything about it.

Google, like other search engines, functions as a directory. It's a (very) long list of referenced pages that can be found through user searches.

What we call indexing is the process by which Google explores and adds website pages to its database.

This then allows Google to find, organize, and display relevant results for its users. By indexing web pages, Google can analyze their content and rank them based on their relevance to user queries.

It's entirely possible to have a site not listed on Google. This is the case for all newly created sites.

Most often, the goal is to be indexed as quickly as possible so that a maximum number of users can find us.

It's important to note that the indexing process takes time. This can be seen as a waste of time because, at this stage, the pages are not yet evaluated for their relevance to user queries.

Therefore, indexing should be as fast as possible to improve the visibility of your website and increase your organic traffic.

To ask Google to index your pages, you can use the most commonly used tool: Google Search Console. On this platform, you can submit your sitemap so that Google knows it needs to index the pages listed there.

However, this process, while faster than letting Google discover your site on its own, can also take days and weeks.

This is where the Web Search Indexing API comes into play. This method, introduced in 2018, allows you, through an HTTP request, to ask Google to index a specific page. This method is much more efficient because if your page is well constructed and does not have any critical errors according to Google, your page is indexed in less than 24 hours (often less).

Learn more about Google's indexing API.

While the API set up by Google allows for faster indexing of your website pages, it is, however, offered by developers, for developers. It can therefore be quite complex to use for people without development knowledge.

Google was betting either on exclusive use by developers or on solutions created by developers for people who neither have the time nor the desire to set up such a system.

The use of the API we just discussed can be optimized on several levels:

Manually submitting URLs to Google is an excellent solution for sites with few pages. As your site grows, you may add and update many pages. By continuing to submit your pages manually, you might submit the same URL multiple times without changing its content.

While Google doesn't provide specifics about whether there's a submission limit, other search engines like Bing suggest that constant submission can be penalizing for your pages' ranking.

Google's Web Indexing API allows indexing a maximum of 200 pages per day. While this quota is satisfactory for most websites, it's not for those containing thousands of pages.

This is where quota optimization comes into play: by creating multiple keys, it's possible to obtain a higher quota. Managing multiple keys then becomes an additional challenge. Each quota is renewed daily, and it can quickly become complicated to juggle between the various created keys, especially when there are many.

By using tools like Foudroyer, which offer an automatic indexing system, you completely eliminate these problems. No more duplicate submissions or juggling between your various created keys.

Indexing your pages is a major challenge for anyone wanting to be found on Google and increase their traffic. As we've seen, although this task seems easy, it's not fast. To speed up this step, several solutions have emerged in recent years.

Not all are equal, and we invite you to discover the benefits of each solutions.