Google's Fetch vs Google's AddUrl

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Lately there has been some talk about whether or not to use either of the systems in Google to add sites and their updates. Here is my opinion on the matter.

Google Webmaster Tools / Google Search Console

The Google Webmaster Tools have always been about an extra tool to the webmaster to master the way your site is indexed. You can tell Google what to index or not to index, analyse and fix things that are going wrong and see how Google sees things. Over the past years this console has been updated and improved and is turning out to be a seriously handy tool.

Within this Search Console are also options such as Sitemaps and Fetch.

Google's AddUrl

Google has for a long time, I think all the way since the beginning of the search engine, had an option to add your website to their search engine. This is what I refer to as AddUrl. It is a place where you submit your URL when it hasn't been added or indexed yet. You can submit the request and it may be fetched and indexed in Google's leisure and timeframe.

GSC Sitemaps

Within Search Console we also find the option to submit our Sitemap. This is a special formatted XML file that includes all the URLs of your site. The sitemap is placed within your website and links to the search console. The search console can then access the file and index all the URLs within this XML file.

You can create a sitemap through for example a WordPress plugin that creates a sitemap.xml file. The WordPress plugin makes sure that the XML file gets updated with your latest content every time you publish something new.

GSC Fetch (& render) + Indexing

Google's Search Console also has an option to fetch sites of your website individually. You have the option to catch problems with your site early and do something about it. There is also an option to render it, so that you can exactly see how Google's crawlers are seeing your content.

There is also an extra option to index your site while you are at it. This is extremely handy when your site has been indexed wrongly. Do note however, that also here it is all at Google's own leisure. They are the boss and will do the indexing when they got time for it.

Different Opinions

In training of both Kyle and Magistudios - Jay, we learn that we can use Fetch in GSC and index to get our site quicker indexed within Google so that we rank quicker in the search results.

This has actually been proven to work and to be faster then regular posting without doing so.

DomW has proven the same can be achieved through the use of Google's AddUrl. He also claims, like me, that the Fetch option was never designed for the purpose of quicker indexing our content.

Unfortunately, no other than Google makes the rules about what will index and when. You can merely steer Google in the right direction for either. You can submit your URL's and hope for the best.

I would however want to use the tools the way they are designed. I am currently not sure if I should continue the way I learned, but as far as proof goes, it does seem to work in either way. At least in the short run. Yes, my articles get indexed and ranked straight away when I use either AddURL or google Fetch & request indexing. The question is what happens after the initial indexing, does my page drop to the bottom or does it stay up there? Google decides.

UPDATE:

I see that this tool:
google webmaster tools - addurl

isn't really linked within the GSC or WMT console any longer, but can still be found through Google.

The fetch and request indexing option is according to Google solely meant for re-indexing content you recently have changed, not for new content.

There is also a maximum of 500 pages you can update, so if you would have more websites and content posted per 30 days, you would have a problem there. But it seems it is meant to be used this way.

Note however that this version of indexing doesn't index the internal and external links, just the content of the site itself. There is neither a guarantee as the algorithm of Google makes the decisions on whether the indexing will be updated.

There is an option to update with internal links included, but this is limited to 10 pages per 30 days.

To bulk update a lot of pages, you should use sitemap says Google. You can re-submit your sitemap anytime.

Any time you update something on your site, whether that be an existing post or a new one, your sitemap.xml file is automatically updated with new posts, links and update-dates. This way Google will automatically see what new content has been published and what is has to crawl.




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Recent Comments

17

This is a great post. I just started using the link you posted last week .
Thanks

Thanks for the information!!

Jeff

Very detailed post Steven. Thanks for explaining the difference between the 2 tools.
Jerome

Hi there
Many thanks for this informative and detailed post.
There are so many variants out there, it's really hard to pick one.
Have you selected 'add url' over GSC, by any chance and if so....how did it work for you
It would be interesting to do a test and see which is better than the other
Cheers and thanks.........PB

Thus us a good review of Google tools. Thanks

There are so many G tools out there, the decision is hard!

Nice explanation of how it’s all supposed to work Steven! Thanks for sharing.

Great article. If you want to learn how to maximize and stay up to date with the latest iteration of a product, read the manufacturer's instruction manual (online version).

For Google anything, I tend to also do the training directly with Google themselves. There is so much more current detail there. It would certainly clear up quite a bit.

All the best and more.

David

Hi Steven,

Thanks so much for this clarification. I didn't know that the topic was "hot", but I did ask this question in chat the other day. I agree, I too prefer to use tools the way they were designed. But, if somebody prefers to open a bottle with a house key, that's their choice - as soon as it works for them and they are happy. ;)

Best,
~ Julia

Thanks for explaining these details. I just started using these features. This helps a lot.
Trevor

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