Why isn't Google crawling my updated pages?

Seeking Advice
1

I’ve got 59 discovered pages on my website (according to GSC), and I made quite a few updates recently. But for some reason, Google isn’t crawling the updated pages, even though they’re all indexed. I updated 14 blog pages during the last week of November, and my sitemap is up to date. But only one of the blogs has been crawled since then, which is frustrating.

The odd part is that my new blog posts get indexed on the same day with no issues. I’m not sure what’s going on with the older pages.

Also, I noticed that my sitemap hadn’t been submitted automatically for a while but was submitted two days ago. Could that have something to do with it?

Google is being weird with this one.

2

Here’s the thing…

Google typically crawls new content more often than old content. Think about it—why would Google waste resources crawling content it already knows about? It makes sense for them to prioritize newer stuff.

Also, you don’t need to worry about the sitemap. Once it’s been submitted, Google knows where it is, and there’s no need to keep submitting it. They know how to find it and will check it out when needed.

Lastly, it’s only been a little over a week. Google has a lot of pages to crawl, so don’t stress too much.

3

@EmmanuelBrown
Hope you’re right. Thanks for the advice .

4

Honestly, Google won’t crawl your old content repeatedly. It seems they pick and choose what to crawl again, since they already have that data. Imagine if Google had to crawl every updated page all the time. That would be a lot of work for them.

Changes might show up later, not immediately after you update a page. From my experience, updates on pages with high search volume tend to get recognized faster. But I’m not sure if that’s true for everyone.

5

@NicheNomad3
Yeah, they’re probably busy with all the spammy AI content out there.

6

MysteryMaverick said:
@NicheNomad3
Yeah, they’re probably busy with all the spammy AI content out there.

That’s true, it’s a real issue these days.

7

Have you tried Bing? Some people say they’ve seen better results on Bing and DDG.

8

ThreadTracker said:
Have you tried Bing? Some people say they’ve seen better results on Bing and DDG.

Yeah, Bing is actually doing better for me. I haven’t tried DDG though.

A few of my blogs are getting more clicks on Bing than on Google. It’s strange. How about you?

9

@MysteryMaverick
I haven’t checked in a while, but I do autopost a lot on social media even without new content, thanks to a program I wrote.

10

You can request a crawl for the page after you update it. It might take a bit of time for Google to notice the changes, but that’s normal.

11

DigitalDruid said:
You can request a crawl for the page after you update it. It might take a bit of time for Google to notice the changes, but that’s normal.

How do I request crawling?

12

@MysteryMaverick
In GSC, type the URL in the top bar and hit enter. Then click ‘request indexing’.

13

DigitalDruid said:
@MysteryMaverick
In GSC, type the URL in the top bar and hit enter. Then click ‘request indexing’.

Ah, yes. I knew that. But the pages are already indexed, so I’m not sure if it will make a difference.

14

@MysteryMaverick
Yes, but if you request a crawl, Google will see the updated content. You can still request indexing even if the page is already indexed. It’s a bit of a tongue twister, haha.

15

DigitalDruid said:
@MysteryMaverick
Yes, but if you request a crawl, Google will see the updated content. You can still request indexing even if the page is already indexed. It’s a bit of a tongue twister, haha.

:grimacing: Have you done this before?

16

@MysteryMaverick
If you make changes, you can request reindexing. It might not be guaranteed, but Google might pay more attention.

17

ThreadTracker said:
@MysteryMaverick
If you make changes, you can request reindexing. It might not be guaranteed, but Google might pay more attention.

Thanks! That helps a lot.

18

How do you check if a page is crawled or not?

19

Chris said:
How do you check if a page is crawled or not?

You can check that in GSC under the page indexing report.

20

MysteryMaverick said:

Chris said:
How do you check if a page is crawled or not?

You can check that in GSC under the page indexing report.

Ah, I see now. I guess we lost the ability to find indexing time after the cache: operator was removed. :rofl: