Submitting a Page to WMT frequently. Good or bad?

[Nutterum]

My practice over the last several months is to manually submit any new content change or content page I create for the website I work on. However I am unsure whether this is actually beneficial. Why you might ask? Below are my concerns.

1) Minor content tweaks within my end(or landing if you prefer) pages may result in Google thinking, I am trying to Game the board. Is there a ground for such assumption?

2) Most of my pages are seasonal, aka they have a expiration date set in the code and once the date is over (+ couple of days in order to squeeze the left over traffic) the automation of my Admin Panel shuts the Page down and creates a page for the next period. Think in terms of <event>+<year> type of pages I create. I then make a list for manual resubmission of these new pages and start implementing them in to WMT. The catch is that the content from the previous page is transferred to the new page with minor tweaks (dates and location more or less) and only after the event report comes out I create a new copy for that landing page. Do you think this might be considered as a bad practice by the Google Algoes? (it has not been thus far but I want to your take on it)

3) Recently I used the tool to force Googlebot to crawl my new mobile responsive code of the website. Is this something you do as well and can it be considered a malpractice?

4) Overall what is your take on this tool and do you think my actions with it can be abusive or am I just getting paranoid?

Thank you for your responses and comments in advance.

[Sand]

I manually submit pages when they're new and when I make a significant update.

Even though my content is typically indexed right away and updates are reflected within a day, I always have the nagging fear (realistic or not) that a scraper is going to get my content indexed before I do and get the credit for it.

I think it would be pretty hard to abuse this tool -- they allot you 500 submissions every 30 days, so use what you need.

[netmeg]

Have never used it. Have never needed it. Have doubts it's effective.

[Sand]

Have never used it. Have never needed it. Have doubts it's effective.

It's effective at getting content indexed very quickly when needed. Some sites I (unfortunately) work on are still static with no means of auto-pinging or auto sitemap creation, and the tool gets new content indexed right away. Without the tool, it can take days for Google to discover them.

[frankleeceo]

It's effective on a weaker site with less natural exposure. With that said... to answer the questions asked specifically with my personal experiences.

1) Constant content tweaks of the same page and resubmit multiple times within a short span of time may not be a good idea. If the page has already been indexed and changes minor, I would not use it. Minor changes probably will not affect traffic or its content.

2) If it works then it works. Maybe it will one day stop working, that's when you change your practice.

3) I would personally do what you did. If you are switching to responsive code, I may use the tool so that the page has the ability to get that "mobile-friendly" label quicker.

4) Weaker site has much less natural google crawl budget and sometimes it can take weeks. But on a stronger site w/ good backlinks and relatively low number of pages, this tool isn't that helpful. Especially when some CMS ping google whenever new content is published.

On a brand new site - like less than 24 hours old new, manual crawl can get your pages on the index 3~5 days quicker than let Google crawl naturally. On an established site the difference is much lower. Think a manual crawl index inclusion is less than 24 hours, but if your natural site gets pages indexed within 24 hours, then the tool in my opinion becomes less relevant.

[Nutterum]

Thank you for the responses. I guess I went a little overboard with my paranoid assumptions, especially seeing some people don't even value the tool as much to begin with. I guess I am the type of guy that wants to use every tool at his disposal.

A quick question though - what do you use the tool most often for?

[traffik daddy]

I use it regularly for new content and possibly for sitewide changes, which I will ask for a crawl with direct links (10 tries per month).

I will be using it more when we have finished upgrading some of our clients websites to mobile friendly (to get tagged as mobile friendly in mobile results) as I believe the tag is page-by-page and not sitewide? I'm not sure if it will speed up the process of getting a page(s) tagged 'mobile friendly', but its worth a try.

It is a handy little tool for sites that are quite new, static, are poorly structured, have slow activity, or previously stagnant, where content can take a little longer to cache.