How long does it take for Google to index my pages?

Google gives no fixed time. Its help pages say indexing typically takes a day or so after you request it, but can take up to a week or two, and that crawling in general takes anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. Some pages are never indexed, because Google does not guarantee it. New sites, and pages that nothing links to, usually wait the longest.

What does Google say about indexing time?

Google's own figures, side by side:

• "A few days to a few weeks" for crawling, in Ask Google to recrawl your URLs. The same page says requesting a recrawl of the same URL repeatedly won't get it crawled any faster.
• "A day or so", but "up to a week or two" after a request, in the URL Inspection tool help.
• "A week or so" before Google starts crawling and indexing a brand-new page or site, in the Page indexing report help.
• "At least a week" to wait after submitting a sitemap or an indexing request before you assume something is wrong, in Why is my page missing from Google Search?

None of these is a promise. Google states that requesting a crawl does not guarantee inclusion in results instantly or at all, and that its systems prioritise the fast inclusion of high-quality, useful content.

What makes indexing faster or slower?

• How Google finds the page. Most pages are discovered through links from pages Google already knows. A new page linked from your home page or a busy section gets found sooner than one linked from nowhere. A sitemap with accurate lastmod dates helps too.
• Whether Google is allowed in. A robots.txt rule, a noindex tag, a login wall or a server error stops the process entirely, however long you wait.
• Whether the page adds anything. If it duplicates another URL, Google indexes the canonical one and reports this one as a duplicate.
• How healthy the site is. DNS failures, server errors and an overloaded host slow crawling for every page.
• How established the site is. A new domain with no links pointing to it has the least for Google to go on.

How can I check whether a page is indexed?

1. Paste the full URL into the URL Inspection bar in Search Console. "URL is on Google" means it is indexed and eligible to appear; "URL is not on Google" comes with the reason in the Page indexing section.
2. Check the Last crawl date in the same panel. If Google has not crawled since you published, the wait is about discovery, not quality.
3. For a whole site, open the Page indexing report and read the reasons listed for pages that are not indexed.

Should I request indexing?

For a handful of important new or changed pages, yes, once each. For many pages, submit or update a sitemap instead: the request button has a daily limit and is meant for a few URLs. If a page is still missing after a week or two, read Discovered, currently not indexed or Crawled, currently not indexed, depending on which status it shows, and see Why is "Request Indexing" not working? if the button itself fails.

How AutoPSEO helps

The Index Tracker inspects up to 1,800 of your URLs every day inside Google's daily quota and stores each result. Its reports show how many days your tracked URLs took to go from not indexed to indexed (average and median), which ones dropped out, and which have not been crawled for months, so you learn your own site's indexing time instead of guessing. Set up an alert in Slack or Teams and you hear about it the day a tracked page leaves the index.