How useful is webmaster tools submit facility

[cass27]

Hi

I make changes to my site quite often and I need to see what kind of effect this is having on the site as quickly as possible. I have noticed there is a submit facility in web master tools which appears to submit the page straight away. If submitted is this likely to have an immediate effect? Will Google track it as the new page immediately?

thank you

cass27

[Stevie D]

If Google is crawling your site and updating its index regularly then you shouldn't need to worry about submitting manually. That's only needed if for some reason Google is not a frequent visitor, or if it just isn't finding a particular page.

[cass27]

If Google is crawling your site and updating its index regularly then you shouldn't need to worry about submitting manually. That's only needed if for some reason Google is not a frequent visitor, or if it just isn't finding a particular page.

Thanks Stevie. would you say a fortnight is pretty average for Google to visit. this seems to be how often it comes to my site. (perhaps I should offer it a cup of coffe and a ginger biscuit and it may think about visiting more often )

Nick

[Stevie D]

Thanks Stevie. would you say a fortnight is pretty average for Google to visit. this seems to be how often it comes to my site. (perhaps I should offer it a cup of coffe and a ginger biscuit and it may think about visiting more often )

That might be worth a try! Once a fortnight really isn't very much. My primary website gets about 6000 hits from Googlebot a month, or on average about 1 hit every 7 minutes – that's across the whole site of several hundred pages, meaning that key pages will be visited at least daily. I would check just how often Googlebot is coming round to see you, because if it really is only every couple of weeks and you're making frequent updates then there's something not quite right.

[cass27]

That might be worth a try! Once a fortnight really isn't very much. My primary website gets about 6000 hits from Googlebot a month, or on average about 1 hit every 7 minutes – that's across the whole site of several hundred pages, meaning that key pages will be visited at least daily. I would check just how often Googlebot is coming round to see you, because if it really is only every couple of weeks and you're making frequent updates then there's something not quite right.

Im not sure if we are talking about the same thing here. What I mean by i know its around once a fortnight because if i put up a new page it takes about that time for it to appear in the cache. I think googlebots are around quite often - but is there a way of telling how often they visit. and should it take about a fortnight for a new page to register on google? If this is all to do with Googlebots is there something you could suggest that may be wrong and how to rectify?

I dont think my original idea will work. 6000 hits is going to mean an awful of of ginger nuts.

thanks

cass27

[TechnoBear]

In GWT, under "Health" there's an option for "Crawl Stats", which tells you roughly how many pages per day Google has crawled over the previous 90 days. Does that help any?

[Stevie D]

Im not sure if we are talking about the same thing here. What I mean by i know its around once a fortnight because if i put up a new page it takes about that time for it to appear in the cache. I think googlebots are around quite often - but is there a way of telling how often they visit. and should it take about a fortnight for a new page to register on google? If this is all to do with Googlebots is there something you could suggest that may be wrong and how to rectify?

If you use any kind of stats package (AWStats is a good one) then that will tell you how many times each of the main robots has visited your site.

Don't expect Google to update its index immediately after every visit! If changes are being reflected in the Google index within a couple of weeks, that isn't too bad, depending on how major the changes are. I would hope for more, but it isn't disastrous.

[cass27]

In GWT, under "Health" there's an option for "Crawl Stats", which tells you roughly how many pages per day Google has crawled over the previous 90 days. Does that help any?

Yes this does help. It appears to visit between 71 and 1 a day. Is this good or bad?

cass27

[TechnoBear]

Yes this does help. It appears to visit between 71 and 1 a day. Is this good or bad?

cass27

Depends how many pages you have. Seriously, as long as you don't have any crawl errors showing and Google is visiting regularly, I'm not sure there's much you can do apart from wait. In my experience, Google does what it does in its own good time and there's precious little one can do to influence it.

(If you don't know what to do with all those ginger nuts you've just bought, I'm sure Stevie D and I could make better use of them than Googlebot. )

[dariussutherland]

I submit every page to google that I add or most and add to the sitemap.

After submission, the url usually turns up in the search the same day. I am not sure this is to do with submission or not but I do it anyway.

[cass27]

Depends how many pages you have. Seriously, as long as you don't have any crawl errors showing and Google is visiting regularly, I'm not sure there's much you can do apart from wait. In my experience, Google does what it does in its own good time and there's precious little one can do to influence it.

(If you don't know what to do with all those ginger nuts you've just bought, I'm sure Stevie D and I could make better use of them than Googlebot. )

Stevie and technobear - you could have had the gingernuts but I ate them as this seo stuff makes me really anxious. I've decided not to use them as part of my internet marketing campaign as it could be considered blackhat seo and then i'll only get penalised and then Google wont visit at all.....

thanks guys

[Stevie D]

Stevie and technobear - you could have had the gingernuts but I ate them as this seo stuff makes me really anxious. I've decided not to use them as part of my internet marketing campaign as it could be considered blackhat seo and then i'll only get penalised and then Google wont visit at all.....

Nah, you'll be fine with ginger nuts – it's only if you bribe with chocolate biscuits that it counts as black hat.