How can you tell if your new content has been indexed?

[corp0803]

Other than simply doing a search in each case, is there any way I can tell (in Webmaster Tools, for example) if the 500-1000 new pages of content I have added have been indexed and are now appearing in search results? My traffic hasn't risen much, but I know at least a few of them are in there...

How can I tell when they're all in?

[KeriMorgret]

Webmaster tools will tell you how many pages you have submitted in a particular site map, and how many pages are indexed in each site map. If you're able to put your new content into a new sitemap, that's one way to judge.

[Matthew_Edgar]

In addition to using the site operator or searching for the page, you can also check Google Analytics to see if your landing pages from organic searches include those new pages (or to see if the total count of organic landing pages has increased/decreased over some time period). This gives you two pieces of data. First it tells if the page was indexed (you wouldn't get traffic to that page from an organic result if it was not yet indexed). Second, it tells you if the indexing paid off (did somebody find this page in the SERPs and click to your website).

[icecarats]

If your site is small enough you can use the 'site:' operator to see when new pages get put in. It's not super accurate though.

Generally if I'm concerned about that kind of thing I do a 'site:myname.com' search in Google and then use the 'Show More Search Tools' and 'Show past 24 hours', 'Show Past Week', etc. Generally it's not really worth doing unless you've got some crazy thing that's linked a short-lived viral phenomena, and if that's the case you should be using sitemaps anyway.