Google has removed the public version of its URL submission tool, which allowed users to submit any page to Google’s index.
Google is now advising people to use Search Console’s Fetch & Submit tool. Alternatively, site owners can notify Google about new pages with a sitemap file.
We've had to drop the public submission feature, but we continue to welcome your submissions using the usual tool in Search Console and through sitemaps directly.
— Google Webmasters (@googlewmc) July 25, 2018
To submit a URL to Google’s index via Search Console, follow the steps below:
- Perform a fetch (or fetch and render) request for a URL using Fetch as Google.
- Click “Request indexing” next to the fetch in the fetch history table.
- Select whether to crawl only that single URL, or that URL plus its direct links.
- Click “Submit” to queue your request.
Google allows site owners to submit up to 10 individual URLs per day.
Note that recrawling is not immediate or guaranteed. It also takes several days for a successful request to be granted.
One of the limitations of submitting URLs via Search Console is that people will only be able to submit URLs from sites they have verified ownership of.
That could end up being a problem for people who want to notify Google of new URLs on sites they don’t personally own. Such as a blog article with a link pointing back to their site.
A handful of SEOs have voiced their concerns on Twitter, but it seems like this change will not be an inconvenience for most.
This is what people will now see if they attempt to visit the public URL submission tool at its previous location:
In addition, the URL submission form that once appeared in the SERPs when searching for “submit URL to Google” is gone.
Additional resources:
