How fast does Google update?

In your experience, how long does it take SEO to factor into rankings

[MinistryOfTruth]

It always seemed to me that it takes a while for Google to update its index, but recently it seems like SEO work affects the rankings quite quickly.

Say you were to do some link-building and got new 100 inbound links in the span of a couple of weeks. How long do you think it would take for these links to register in the Google index and cause a ranking improvement in SERPs?

(I'm sure inbounds also mature, but I mean the time it takes for new links to be first factored into SERPs.)

[pavlovapete]

Hi MinistryOfTruth,

not sure how long SEO changes take to be indexed but there are a few examples here showing it can take "as long as 24 hours" :) for a new site to show up in the Google SERPs.

The new wordtracker site was one example.

Cheers

[errorsamac]

Ministry - In my experience, I have seen results in anywhere from 1-4 weeks, depending on the quality of links you are receiving. Keep in mind the quality/trust of the sites that are linking to you too. If CNN links to you, expect changes in a week. If Wally's Widget World (PR0) links to you, it might take longer to find the link and also it will not give you significant link juice, so you won't see much/any movement in the SERPs.

[Crush]

I agree with 3-4 weeks depending on serps. Competitive serps should be no more than a month. Something less competitive it could be 7-10 days after we bung links at it. Of course the other factor is the domain here.

[lgn1]

Our Yahoo directory link took about two weeks to improve our listing. Another less well known directory took three weeks.

So it looks like 2-4 weeks is a good rule of thumb.

[Crush]

You can do it with one link? We do it with 1000's. Must be uncompetitve SERPS.

[suggy]

"We do it with 1000's. Must be uncompetitve SERPS."

There's more than one way to skin a cat, my friend. Persoanlly, I use quality not quantity. I have domains ranked 1 on WWW for 80million plus results and the whole domain has no more than a few hundred links.

[Crush]

We are talking 100s not 1 yahoo link.

[ogletree]

If a high PR high trust links to a page it will get updated in Google in 20 hours. I have done some testing. It works very nice. If I ever need to get a page updated fast I will ask around and find somebody with a pr7+ site to rank for me for 24 hours. This also works for brand new pages.

[Crush]

The thread is about updating but gone off on a tangent about ranking. Updating yes, high pr helps. Ranking you will need more than 1 link.

[steveb]

One link obviously can help, and do it in as little as one day.

You can get a stronger impact over time, but changes can help immediately.

[ogletree]

Over time is an entire different thread. I am only talking about getting something specific indexed or updated quickly.

[trinorthlighting]

If the page is in the regular index, a few days

If the page is in the supplemental index, a few months...

[abhishekkaushik]

Google is taking more time to index my newer pages than it was around one-two months back, seems like Googlebot come to my site and load the same pages three-four times and it takes about a whole 7 days to show up. Anybody experiencing the same?

[edited by: tedster at 2:22 pm (utc) on July 6, 2007]
[edit reason] moved from another location [/edit]

[tourmapia]

Hi
I am waiting for one week, and Google didn;t cache sicne then....

How often the Google visits the page?

[ogletree]

It can take up to a month on some sites.

[dailypress]

MinistryOfTruth:
I had a website with many good link exchanges and it only took 1-2 months to be indexed and was listed with a PR of 5 a few months later. I then started another site without accepting banner or link exchanges and it took 5 months to show up in SERP and now it has been about 7 months and unfortunately more than 50% of the pages have no PR and only some show up in SERP (mostly MSN and Yahoo).
So in short, it varies and depends on the quality of the site, number and quality of backlinks and other factors which Im not aware of. Once I learn more, Ill let you know. :)

[kamikaze Optimizer]

I had a press release of mine (not on my site) indexed in 7 minutes last night. The link went live on the press release index page at 3:00am Eastern time and was in the Google search index at 3:07am.

It was not in Google news until 3:31am and 4:00am for Yahoo news.

[guia]

Google is constantly changing its keyword rankings and position . It is depends on you promote your site based on google algorithm or your link building strategies.

[mrhazelj]

1 cycle of caches. that means all your links spidered once(9at least the good ones) plus the page you want to rank for spidered as well. for me, that's a week.