When do you use 'Fetch as a Google'' on Google Webmaster?
-
Hi,
I was wondering when and how often do you use 'Fetch as a Google'' on Google Webmaster and do you submit individual pages or main URL only?
I've googled it but i got confused more. I appreciate if you could help.
Thanks
-
I hazard to say that if the new product was in the sitemap it would have also appears in the SERPs. We submit sitemaps every day and products are in the index within hours.
I guess the GWMT manual submission is okay if you need to manually fix some pages, but then it asks the question, how your SEO efforts could not make those visible to bots (via link structure or sitemaps).
-
Thanks Gerd, it's a bit more clear now. Appreciate your help.
-
Thanks Frank, appreciate your help
-
Thank you so much for your reply. I am a bit more clear now what to do. Appreciate your help.
-
Sida, what I meant is that I use the Google Webmaster Tool function "Fetch as Google" only as a diagnostic function to see how GoogleBot receives a request from my website.
It seems that people fetch URLs via the GWMT "Fetch as Google" and then use the function to submit it to the index. I find that not a good idea as any new content should either be discoverable (via SEO) or should be submitted to Google automatically via a sitemap (hinted in robots.txt)
-
Thanks Gerd, Would you mind clarifying a bit more what 'diagnostic tool' is and if you recommend a name as well, that'll be fantastic.
-
Use it as a "diagnostic tool" to check how content or error pages are retrieved via the bot. I specifically look at it from a content and HTTP-status perspective.
I would not use it to submit URLs - for that you should rather use a sitemap file. Think of "Fetch as Google" as a troubleshooting tool and not something to submit pages to an index.
-
Here's an oh-by-the-way.
One of our manufacturer's came out with a product via slow roll literally within the last 5 days. They have not announced the release of it to the retailers. I happened to stumble on it visiting their site while updating products.
I did a search of the term and found I wasn't the only one unaware of it so I scrambled to add the product to the site, promote it and submit it to the index late Tuesday.
It's Thursday and its showing in SERPs.
Would it have appeared that quickly if I didn't submit it via fetch? I don't know for sure but I'm inclined to think not. Call me superstitious.
Someone debunk the myth if you can. One less thing for me to do.
-
If I add a lot a product/articles I just do a sitemap re-submit but if I only add one product or article I just wait till the bots crawl to that links. It usually takes a couple of day before it gets indexed. I never really used the fetch as google unless I made changes to the structure of the website.
Hope this helps.
-
I submit every product and category I add.
Do I have to? No. Is it necessary? No - we have an xml sitemap generator. Google is like Big Brother - he will find you. Fetch is a tool that you can use or not use.
Will Google find it faster and will you show up more quickly in search results if you submit it? I don't know.
-
Thank you AWC, I've read that article arlready but I am not quite sure is that how often this feature should be used. I think i should be more specific..If you have a ecommerce website and adding a product every 2-3days, would you submit the link every time you add a new item ? When you publish a blog article on your website, would you submit it immediately?
-
I think GWT explains it very well.
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/158587?hl=en
I typically use it to submit new pages to the index although its probably not necessary if you have an xml sitemap. Not certain on that one.
More tech savvy folks probably use it to also check the crawlability and "health" of pages.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
'duplicate content' on several different pages
Hi, I've a website with 6 pages identified as 'duplicate content' because they are very similar. This pages looks similar because are the same but it show some pictures, a few, about the product category that's why every page look alike each to each other but they are not 'exactly' the same. So, it's any way to indicate to Google that the content is not duplicated? I guess it's been marked as duplicate because the code is 90% or more the same on 6 pages. I've been reviewing the 'canonical' method but I think is not appropriated here as the content is not the same. Any advice (that is not add more content)?
Technical SEO | | jcobo0 -
Any SEO-wizards out there who can tell me why Google isn't following the canonicals on some pages?
Hi, I am banging my head against the wall regarding the website of a costumer: In "duplicate title tags" in GSC I can see that Google is indexing a whole bunch parametres of many of the url's on the page. When I check the rel=canonical tag, everything seems correct. My costumer is the biggest sports retailer in Norway. Their webshop has approximately 20 000 products. Yet they have more than 400 000 pages indexed by Google. So why is Google indexing pages like this? What is missing in this canonical?https://www.gsport.no/herre/klaer/bukse-shorts?type-bukser-334=regnbukser&order=price&dir=descWhy isn't Google just cutting off the ?type-bukser-334=regnbukser&order=price&dir=desc part of the url?Can it be the canonical-tag itself, or could the problem be somewhere in the CMS? Looking forward to your answers Sigurd
Technical SEO | | Inevo0 -
Google how deal with licensed content when this placed on vendor & client's website too. Will Google penalize the client's site for this ?
One of my client bought licensed content from top vendor of Health Industry. This same content is on the vendor's website & my client's site also but on my site there is a link back to vendor is placed which clearly tells to anyone that this is a licensed content & we bought from this vendor. My client bought paid top quality content for best source of industry but at this same this is placed on vendor's website also. Will Google penalize my client's website for this ? Niche is HEALTH
Technical SEO | | sourabhrana1 -
Matt Cutts says 404 unavailable products on the 'average' ecommerce site.
If you're an ecommerce site owner, will you be changing how you deal with unavailable products as a result of the recent video from Matt Cutts? Will you be moving over to a 404 instead of leaving the pages live still? For us, as more products were becoming unavailable, I had started to worry about the impact of this on the website (bad user experience, Panda issues from bounce rates, etc.). But, having spoken to other website owners, some say it's better to leave the unavailable product pages there as this offers more value (it ranks well so attracts traffic, links to those pages, it allows you to get the product back up quickly if it unexpectedly becomes available, etc.). I guess there's many solutions, for example, using ItemAvailability schema, that might be better than a 404 (custom or not). But then, if it's showing as unavailable on the SERPS, will anyone bother clicking on it anyway...? Would be interested in your thoughts.
Technical SEO | | Coraltoes770 -
Google Disavow Tool
Some background: My rankings have been wildly fluctuating for the past few months for no apparent reason. When I inquired about this, many people said that even though I haven't received any penalty notice, I was probably affected by penguin. (http://moz.com/community/q/ranking-fluctuations) I recently did a link detox by LinkRemovalTools and it gave me a list of all my links, 2% were toxic and 51% were suspiscious. Should I simply disavow the 2%? There are many sites where is no contact info.
Technical SEO | | EcomLkwd0 -
My blog page isn't ranking in Google
Hi, I noticed that my blog page on my site isn't in Google when i search for full URL link http://www.asggutter.com/blog/ instead i see page that isn't even working asggutter.com/sitemap.xml screen shot http://screencast.com/t/6OVFLwL8nTL How i can i fix that. Thanks
Technical SEO | | tonyklu0 -
Hit by Google
My site - www.northernlightsiceland.com - has been hit by google and Im not sure why. The traffic dropped 75% last 24 hours and all the most important keywords have dropped significantly in the SERP. The only issue I can think of are the subpages for the northern lights forecasting I did every day e.g. http://www.northernlightsiceland.com/northern-lights-forecast-iceland-3-oct-2012/ I have been simply doing a copy/paste for 1 month the same subpage, but only changing the top part (Summary) for each day. Could this be the reason why Im penalized? I have now simply taken them all down minus the last 3 days (that are relevant). What can I do to get up on my feet again? This is mission critical for me as you can imagine. Im wondering if it got hit by this EMD update on 28 sept that was focusing on exact match domains http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4501349-1-30.htm
Technical SEO | | rrrobertsson0 -
Google Webmaster Tools reports 404s for plain text. Should I create those URLs and 301 them to actual pages?
IA few years back I noticed that Google Webmaster Tools returns 404s from regular text containing a URL, but no anchor tag. I came accross this again today. Is it worthwhile to create those URLs and 301 redirect them to proper pages.
Technical SEO | | Svetoslav0