New website? How long before it appears in a Google search?

“How long before my new website appears in Google?” That’s often the first question web designers and search engine optimisers like M35 Web Design are asked.

If you build a website but don’t know how to properly ‘inform’ search engines that you have a new website, then it may never appear in their index. If you do know how to do this, then it’s usually a matter of a few hours before Google et al discover your site.

Yesterday, one of our client websites went live for the first time. About twelve hours later two minor search engines had investigated the website’s content. Less then 24 hours later Googlebot (the search software used by Google which collects documents from the web to build a searchable index for the Google Search engine) was seen looking around the new website. Googlebot stayed there for almost 1.5 hours, examining various pages.

Now it will still take a while before the new website appears under anything meaningful, i.e. a search under something other than it’s domain name, but the above is great news to website owners – and M35 Web Design of course.

To sum up, for anyone who wants their website to do well there should be little that’s more joyful than spotting Google nosing around your site! Nerdy, but true! And once Googlebot has been there once, then website owners need to make sure it comes back. The easy way to do this is to update your website site every so often. Google is in the business of providing quality content for human visitors, so that’s what they’re looking for in a website. Provide frequent, new content and you’ll certainly reap the benefits.