Google has reenabled the request indexing tool, within the URL Inspection tool in Google Search Console. The tool was disabled on October 14, 2020 – 69 days ago – and it was expected to come back before the holiday shopping season. That came and past but it is now back before Christmas and New Years.

It’s back. Here is a screen shot of the feature in Google Search Console:

The announcement. Google announced this on Twitter saying “We’re glad to announce that ‘Request Indexing’ is back to the Google Search Console URL Inspection – just in time for the new year!”

Google also “reminded” us that if you have “large numbers of URLs, you should submit a sitemap instead of requesting indexing” via Google Search Console. Google also said that the “requesting indexing does not guarantee inclusion to the Google index.”

Why we care. When this feature was disabled, SEOs and site owners were very much so missing it. Google has said normal indexing is not impacted but the tool was still very much missed. Google has now brought it back and you can use it to expedite crawling and potentially indexing of important URLs. These URLs might be old URLs with updated content or new URLs that you want to get into Google Search fast.

But like Google said, just because you use this tool, it does not mean Google will index the page or rank it.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry’s personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.

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