Indexing Time Calculator
Work out how many days it takes to get a whole site submitted to Google when you can only send a fixed number of URLs per day.
Backlog today
4,000 URLs
Time to clear it
about 3 weeks
Estimated finish
...
200 submissions per day minus 7.1 new pages per day leaves 192.9 per day for the backlog: 4,000 / 192.9 = 21 days.
Show as table
| Day | URLs left |
|---|---|
| 0 | 4,000 |
| 1 | 3,807 |
| 2 | 3,614 |
| 3 | 3,421 |
| 4 | 3,229 |
| 5 | 3,036 |
| 6 | 2,843 |
| 7 | 2,650 |
| 8 | 2,457 |
| 9 | 2,264 |
| 10 | 2,071 |
| 11 | 1,879 |
| 12 | 1,686 |
| 13 | 1,493 |
| 14 | 1,300 |
| 15 | 1,107 |
| 16 | 914 |
| 17 | 721 |
| 18 | 529 |
| 19 | 336 |
| 20 | 143 |
| 21 | 0 |
Google's quotas
- Indexing API: 200 publish requests per day per Google Cloud project by default. Google can raise it on request. Officially the API is meant for JobPosting and BroadcastEvent pages.
- URL Inspection API: 2,000 inspections per day and 600 per minute per Search Console property. It reads index status, it does not submit anything.
- This is the time to submit every URL. Submission asks Google to crawl. Indexing is still Google's decision and can take longer, or not happen.
How the estimate is calculated
The maths is simple on purpose. The backlog is the number of pages that are not indexed yet. Every day you can submit a fixed number of URLs, and every day some new pages join the queue.
backlog = pages x (1 - indexed share)
net per day = daily quota - new pages per week / 7
days = backlog / net per day (rounded up)Take a shop with 5,000 pages, 20% of them indexed: it has a backlog of 4,000. With 200 submissions per day and 50 new products per week, the net rate is about 192.9 per day, so the queue is empty after 21 days.
Submitted is not the same as indexed
The result is the time needed to tell Google about every URL. What happens next is up to Google. Pages that are useful, unique and linked from the rest of the site tend to get in within days of being crawled. Pages that look like duplicates often end up as "Crawled, currently not indexed". Check those with the indexability checker first, so you do not spend quota on URLs that are blocked anyway.
Ways to shorten the wait
- Submit the pages that earn money first, and leave tag pages and filters for last.
- Keep an accurate sitemap with real
lastmoddates. Build one with the sitemap generator. - Send the same URLs to Bing and Yandex with the IndexNow submitter. IndexNow has no comparable daily cap for normal sites.
- Request a higher Indexing API quota in the Google Cloud console if your use case qualifies.
TurboIndex runs this queue for you: it reads your sitemaps, submits up to the quota every day, and tracks which URLs made it into the index.
Questions and answers
How long does Google take to index a new page?
It varies from a few hours to several weeks, and some pages never get indexed. Well linked pages on sites that Google crawls often are picked up fastest. This calculator estimates the part you control: how long it takes to submit every URL with a fixed daily quota.
What is the Indexing API quota?
The default is 200 publish requests per day per Google Cloud project. You can ask Google for a higher quota in the Cloud console. Google documents the API for pages with JobPosting or BroadcastEvent markup.
Does submitting a URL guarantee indexing?
No. A submission tells Google the URL exists and has changed. Google then decides whether to crawl it and whether the page is worth indexing. Thin, duplicate or blocked pages stay out no matter how often they are submitted.
Why does the calculator say never?
Because you publish more new pages per day than you can submit per day. The backlog grows instead of shrinking. Raise the quota, use several projects for several sites, or submit only your important pages.