Changed website. Do I now just sit and wait for Google to spider?

[JMR Computers]

Hi there guys, just discovered this site, looks great!

I have been working on a friends website for a while now, i've used various tips to try and get it recognised by google higher up the list.

I want to optimise it for certain keywords. The site is listed on google, and I have made quite a few changes to the sites meta tags and body content.

My question is what now? Do I wait for google to crawl my site again, is there anything I can do to let them know its been updated?

Jon

<Removed specific keyowrds or domains.
See Forum Charter [webmasterworld.com]>

[edited by: tedster at 1:21 am (utc) on April 13, 2006]

[treeline]

There are links to this site from other sites, right? If no, go and get some.

Assuming there are links to this site from other sites, Googlebot should be by in a while and check out your handiwork. While you can go to Google and "submit" a site, it's usually best to let 'em come and get you. Adding links from other sites is a good way to speed up the process.

Oh, and by the way: Welcome to WebmasterWorld!

[tedster]

Since the site is already listed in Google, it "should" naturally be re-crawled at some point. However, the currently crawling behvaior looks like Googlebot is somewhat off his feed. Waiting might be the only real recourse. More relevant links are often helpful. (And just maybe install the Google Toolbar on your neighbor's computer and take him on a tour of the site.)

[JMR Computers]

Yeah there are links from other sites, however not many (it has a pagerank of 2).

I'm trying to get some more links but its quite tough so any suggestions would be great (have submitted to all the directories etc)

As you said all the pages are already indexed on google so its just a matter of time! :(

[g1smd]

Google re-indexing has slowed right up, and there seems to be a 4 to 10 day delay in getting what they have crawled to actually show up in the results.

Run Xenu LinkSleuth over your site and fix all problems found. Get a 301 redirect from non-www to www in place. Make sure that every page of your site has a unique title and meta description.

Then wait at least a month and see what happens.

[Steph_R]

You could use Google's sitemap feature to speed things up. [google.com...]

This tool is good for creating the sitemap file: [xml-sitemaps.com...]

I have found that this speeds up indexing new or changed pages in google.

[JMR Computers]

Used sitemap, great tool!

I guess I will just wait for Google to spider! Must be patient

[ronburk]

I have found that this speeds up indexing new or changed pages in google.

For a different opinion, tune into Matt Cutts' blog:

So just because your site has been around for a couple years (or that you submit a sitemap), that doesn’t mean that we’ll automatically crawl every page on your site.