Is 3 months too long before new pages indexed?

[Pjman]

I'm just looking for any input here. I'm a bit baffled with this one.

I have a site that had about 500 pages, all indexed. It's 4 years old and has about 60 organic links (all different referrals) pointing to it. Back 3 months ago I added over 2,000 pages to it. None of the new pages are indexed yet. I have verified that nothing is blocking those new pages from being indexed.

Doesn't that (3 months) seem like a long time? Albeit that I haven't link built at all for this site, but 3 months and no new indexed pages.

[aakk9999]

Three months is definitely too long.
It may take some time for ALL pages to be indexed, but if none of them to be indexed after three months, this indicates some kind of technical issue. I would expect at least some of them indexed within a week.

A few questions:
- Have you checked in your server logs whether any of these pages have been crawled by Googlebot?
- Are these pages interlinked within the site? If they are, have the page(s) leading to them been crawled in the last three months?
- have you tried to do Fetch as Googlebot within Search Console and then use the option to submit the page to Google? If you do this, is the page indexed?
- have you tried adding URLs to sitemap.xml?

[ken_b]

Are you actually talking about indexing or do you mean listing in the serps/ranking?

How many pages does G normally crawl per day? Or are you saying G hasn't crawled any of these new pages?

[lucy24]

nothing is blocking those new pages from being indexed

From being indexed, or from being crawled? Have you verified, using an exact-text search, that the pages are not in the index at all? Conversely, if you've got long and complicated URLs, you can use that in your search and the pages should come up even if there's an accompanying blahblah about robots.txt.

[Pjman]

Thanks for the input guys. Just knowing I'm not crazy is half the battle.

To the questions:

1. Did Googlebot visit? How often?

I verified that Googlebot visits regularly. I receive roughly 50-75 visits a day.

2. Is the new content interlinked within the site and has it been crawled?

Yes, it is interlinked and has been crawled.

3. Fetch as Googlebot

I haven't done this for the site before. After reading your question I went and Fetched all the major new pages and it rendered perfectly outside of the Adsense tags.

4. Sitemap

I haven't. Since I'm never in a rush with my sites, I rarely do that. But, I'll investigate doing that soon.

5. Indexing or Ranking:

I am not worried about ranking yet, the new content just isn't being indexed at all.

6. URL structure?

The URLs are simple as they can be example:

mysite.com/category1/mypagetitle.html

Again thanks for all input.

[Andy Langton]

How are you checking for indexing, incidentally? You can try:

id:mysite.com/category1/mypagetitle.html

And:

site:mysite.com/category1/

Definitely no noindex meta element or HTTP header? Check the "Downloaded HTTP response" section of "Fetch as Google" to see HTML and headers Google received.

If Google has definitely requested any of the affected URLs and they don't appear in results, then you're likely looking at a severe technical or content problem.

[aakk9999]

Regarding 1. Did Googlebot visit? How often?
Here I meant - has googlebot visited any of NEW pages you added? If it has, can you search for this page in Google index using URL like this:

site:example.com inurl:example.com/category1/mypagetitle.html

Regarding 3. Fetch as Googlebot
After you fetched the page, you get an opportunity to submit it for indexing. Have you tried this? Once you submit it, wait a few hours (sometimes even sooner) and check if the page has been indexed:

site:example.com inurl:example.com/category1/mypagetitle.html

I would also go to Search Console and go to Google Index --> Index Status and check the graph - is it a flat line or has there been an increase of indexed pages that perhaps started a few months ago?

[Pjman]

It's weird

1) Googlebot Visits:
Googlebot visited the new pages at least a dozen times each, in some cases over 50 times.

2) Fetch as Googlebot
I fetched and submitted roughly a day later, nothing indexed. When you look at the Fetch status it's all cool.

3) Index Status Graph

Complete flat line for last 3 months, before that there were bumps up and down.

It's just weird,

[Pjman]

Scratch that....

I just hand verified everything new is now indexed.
I had no new indexed pages before I "Fetched as Googlebot", I guess that pushed the needle.

Still 3 months, was really odd.

[aakk9999]

I had no new indexed pages before I "Fetched as Googlebot", I guess that pushed the needle.

Interesting. To me this would indicate that something is wrong with the path these pages are interlinked within the website.

Perhaps these new pages were not blocked by googlebot, but the page(s) that links to these new pages may be either blocked or maybe not crawled or have had some technical issue or something else.