On Feb. 6 a sitemap was generated and submitted for my relaunched danscartoons.com and there are roughly 9,875 pages throughout. In what length of time does it normally take to see the pages start to get indexed and appear in specific search results. It’s a 10 year old URL that was completely overhauled and rebuilt and recently re-launched with all appropriate redirects taken care of etc. before sitemap was sent in.
Google will usually index your site pretty quickly - you can do a site:yourdomain search to see what’s been indexed.
Whether it returns your pages in the search results - and how high up - is another matter.
thanks for this…so basically I may be a little overly anxious since it has been only 4 days since the sitemap was submitted . . . . .
I’d say so. 
Google takes as long as it takes, and there’s not a lot you can do about it, beyond what you’ve already done. Almost 10,000 pages is a lot to crawl and Google won’t necessarily do them all at once. You should also be able to see from GWT how many pages have been crawled.
You know, I was curious about that (re GWT)…if I log in to the account, where do I navigate and then click or look to see what is going on? Interested - THANX
In the main menu (in the left-hand sidebar), go to Crawl / Craw Stats. The top-most chart will tell you the number of pages crawled in each day in the last 90 days.
But don’t put too much reliance on the figures. The chart isn’t cumulative, so it doesn’t show you whether 20 pages have been crawled, or one page has been crawled 20 times. Personally, this is one metric that I rarely even look at. And, in any case, that’s not much you can do to improve it. As TechnoBear says, just let things take their course.
Mike
Thanks Miki…I appreciate it…I looked inside and into my URL and out of just over 13,000 URLs submitted in the total combined sitemap, 3039 have been indexed. Considering it’s only been about 4 and a half days since the initial submission, I should not be complaining I don’t think. I will attempt to be patient LOL! Anything else I ought to be aware of? For instance, I had a page I wanted to add to the existing site, and then put an image gallery on that specific page including categorizing each of the images (23 total) so the have a separate page devoted to each in that respect. Is it OK to do things like this while a site is getting gradually indexed? I.e., this page nor any of the images in the intended image gallery are part of the site until today. No, I haven’t launched those pages or gallery with images yet . . . thanks!
Danno, no I don’t think that sort of thing will cause you any problems. Don’t worry about it.
By the way, how did you determine that only 3,039 pages had been indexed? I don’t know anywhere in GWT that tells you that. (You can look at the total in Search Queries / Top Pages, but that only tells you the number of pages that have had a signficant number of recent search impressions.) I’m only asking out of curiosity.
Mike
Miki: When you go into your GWT account, in middle of page there is that screenshot of your index page plus the www.yourdomain.com hyperlink . . . .do you see that? Click the screenshot of your index page (just underneath Sort: by site health etc.) which ought to take you to the “Current Status” of that specific site…you’ll see across the page from left to right: CRAWL ERRORS, SEARCH QUERIES and then SITEMAPS…it is under “Sitemaps” you’ll see how many pages are indexed.
Thanks for that, Danno.
In fact, I don’t see the sitemap figure you refer to, because I have never had any reason to submit a sitemap. I’ve always been able to get all my sites fully indexed without them. But never mind. As I said, I was only asking out of curiosity.
Mike
I usually submit pages via fetch as google in WT. Few hours they turn up in the search index.
I imagine that would keep you pretty busy with 9,875 pages to submit.
Hi Darrius: Can you elaborate a bit? I.e., what is “fetch”…if I sound as though I am in left field is because I am not proficient in this sitemap submission stuff. It has been roughly 8 days since initial sitemap submission’s been made and I see it has hit the site somewhat as roughly 3769 url’s have been indexed out of a total of 13,729 throughout the entire site (in my sig below) - I have appreciated all of your input btw…another cool site is “woo rank”, and type that into G all as one word. I am not certain if they like hyperlinks put in these posts…but that site shows alot of what is happening with the URL you enter…check it out. I have no association with the site but thot it would be great to let others know about.
These links might help:
There is a limit as to how many URLs you can submit per week using fetch; the blog post says 50, while the Webmaster Help article says 500. I think the latter is correct, judging by GWT.
Are you sure you really need a sitemap?
People sometimes get carried away with sitemaps. There’s a common belief that sitemaps are an essential part of SEO, and that you really must submit one if your site is to succeed. In fact, the majority of sites don’t need a sitemap, and submitting one won’t make any difference in those cases.
Where a sitemap is needed is for sites that contain URLs that Google won’t find through normal crawling. If your site has proper navigation, where any page can be reached by following links, the search bot will find its way round the site on its own, without recourse to a site map. If your site doesn’t have such navigation, it might be worth focusing on providing it - if only for the benefit of your (human) visitors.
Mike
Mike: I note in latter part of your comment, that’s the case with my retooled site (in my signature). I say this because since WP “loops” and not all inner-pages are connected through innner links, so a sitemap was a prerequisite. Also, out of the just over 13,000 URLs in the site, just over 5,000 have now been indexed and the sitemap was initially submitted 10 days ago . . . so in grand scheme of things, I cannot complain - I also sent out a couple of press releases that have already been picked up by G, which in a round about way may help for backlink “juice” since I subscribed to Google News via specific keywords based on what my site relates to and sure enough, I see the releases already popping up on G…so getting some extra “juice” there . . . . .
Am now back to report that my information in GWT’s now indicates that of the just over 13,000 URL’s in my site…nearly all 13,000 have been indexed via the site map that was submitted. Is there anything I need to be aware of or do, in regards to my site being fully indexed? I am a bit surprised in how short of a time, that the new web site was fully indexed (about 3.5 weeks)
Couple days is usually all it takes.
after the submission of the sitemap, Google will do it instantly, but the result will be seen after a week or so.