How to Use Fetch as Google. Why You Need This Tool!

Using fetch as Google has become an automatic habit for me every time I publish something new on one or more of my sites. Today I will be showing how to do this too.

Not only is it easy, but it’s also extremely beneficial for SEO. In fact, I think this tool needs to be used on all websites!

Update: New Fetch tool has been released by Google…

It is now know as the “URL Inspection” and I have updated the instructions on how to use the tool below.

Do you know what fetch as Google is?

It’s a really awesome tool inside the free Webmaster Tools program. It basically makes Google itself come to any page or post you have on your site that you tell it to go to, crawl it and index it very quickly. You can have a new post be on the search engine within hours as a result of this, which is WAY faster than going about it without using it.

Here’s why this is such a great tool (besides the speed of it all):

When you JUST start a website (the beginning stage), every new page or post of content you publish will take several days and even weeks to get that crawl and index from Google. It’s part of the sandbox stage and during which it’s almost like you’re waiting in line behind other websites in a queue. 

Even when your website becomes more noticed, indexed and ranked (the mid stage), it can still take days for that initial index to happen. And to reach that mid point can take several month.

In the late stages of your website maturity, when it’s doing well, indexes can happen in as quickly as hours. It can almost get to a point where you don’t even need to use the fetch option, it just happens too quickly to even worry about it.

While the late stage is where you want to get to with your website, the fact is, it can take many months to reach that point and how much lag and wait there is to get those indexes in the beginning and mid stages can add up all on it’s own.

Without the fetch as Google tool, you could be wasting months.

That being months in total waiting time for your site to get crawled and indexed from the beginning to mid stages.

Here’s 2 examples that will really drive home how important this tool is:

Let’s say we have 2 people, John and Sarah, each with their own websites. Both these people write 1 article a day on their websites (which is great for SEO), but while John uses the fetch tool, Sarah does not, and thus this is what happens:

As soon as John publishes a new article, he heads over to Webmaster Tools, uses the fetch tool and within hours, that article is indexed and then the ranking growth begins.

As soon as Sarah publishes a new article, she doesn’t do anything else. And it takes Google days to find her content and index it. 

As a result, John is already days ahead of her in the index and ranking process and if you keep adding the time lag that accumulates each time, while both these 2 publish articles continuously, eventually John is going to be months ahead of Sarah as time goes on.

So yeah, this kind of simple example is really eye opening of how important this tool is, especially for newer websites and blogs. 

Ok, let’s do this. Let me show you how to use fetch as Google (skip this part, it’s outdated!):

Note: Go to the next section for the updated instructions.

First, create a webmaster tools account.

Second, register your website on that program and verify it.

Third, each time you create new content on your site, head over to Webmaster Tools, go to the crawl option, enter the URL of the new post you put up and you’re good to go.

And like I said, this is the process I follow on ALL my new content, across all my sites. The only times I neglect to do this is when I have a late stage site that’s already doing well in Google, in which case, the indexing happens almost as quickly. 

Update: How to use the new fetch as Google tool (this is the updated option):

Firstly, this has been renamed as the “inspection tool” in webmaster tools so this is what I will refer to it from here on out:

Some preliminary instructions are still the same, such as:

You still need to 1) Sign up with Webmaster tools and 2) You have to verify your site with Webmaster tools before you can use the inspection (fetch) tool. When you have this done, here are the updated instructions:

1) Head over to Webmaster Tools and simply paste the URL in the top middle of the WMT search bar you wished to get fetched:

2) Once you paste it, a message will appear saying that it’s testing to see if the URL is actually indexed on Google or not.

• If you just wrote a new article, it will say it’s not.
• If you did write an article and it’s indexed, you can still fetch it as long as you updated it with new content.

Either way, once the inspection is complete, you will have an option (in both scenarios) to “request indexing”. Click it, wait a minute or two and it will tell you that it’s been submitted:

And that’s all you need to do. It’s actually an easier option with this new console than the old one.

Is there any backlash SEO effect from using this tool?

I don’t know about you, but I once had this paranoia where I felt that if I published content too quickly and used this tool, too much, that this would somehow penalize my site and my SEO for this. 

If you have a similar worry, the short answer to this though is: No, this will not happen. Just don’t submit the same URL too many times, once is really enough.

You will not have any negative SEO effects on your site if you use fetch tool and if you want to dig deeper and find out why, the answer is that…

Google itself created this program with the intent that you use it. In fact, they want you to use it so much that they give you a “limit” of 500 times that you can use this tool, a MONTH.

Why would they penalize you if they have such a tremendous limit available to you? They wouldn’t, they want you to use it, so do it 🙂

The only things that would have an adverse affect on your SEO is if your actual website was doing things which Google doesn’t like and that’s a whole other topic I will be discussing on this site, but at a later time.

Two final important message about using this tool:

The first message:

Perhaps you already picked up on it, or perhaps not, but what you need to know is that this tool only works in line with you creating content on your site. There’s no point in using this if you don’t write and publish new articles and there’s certainly no need to use the fetch tool on an existing article, that’s already indexed.

So if you are going to use this tool to it’s fullest extent, it has to be through creating and publishing content on a consistent basis and THEN applying this tool. Only then will you be able to get the desired SEO results from all of this.

The second message:

Throughout this article, I have used the word “index” and I have also used the word “ranking” and in my YouTube video which I shared in this article, I explained the difference, but there may be a chance you didn’t see it. 

In any case, here’s the difference:

Do note, that indexing HAS to happen before ranking can begin. This tool expedites the indexing, thereby making the ranking happen faster, naturally.

Knowing this, do not worry if you get your new content indexed, but can’t find it in Google, it’s normal and takes time to rank. Remember, the fetch tool does NOT rank your content high, it simply indexes it faster, allowing the ranking to happen faster. This is a message many people misinterpret all the time.

Another tip I like to include is that I’ll usually wait at least a few months to see if the ranking for the article I fetched are high and if they are not, I will run the same article through these 15 adjustments, and then use the same URL inspection tool. This is a great strategy that improves my rankings.

Have any questions regarding fetching your site with webmaster tools, indexing, ranking and/or any other things discussed in this topic? Comment below and get the answers!

P.S. I just published this article. Guess what I’ll be doing next? I think we all know 🙂