The short answer: after an expedited submission, Googlebot's first crawl arrived in 3 to 130 seconds (median about 8 seconds) across ten measured submissions, and pages appeared in Google's index 2 minutes to 6 hours later (median about 5 minutes). A free Search Console request summoned the crawler in 77 seconds but took about 2.7 hours to index. Left entirely alone, a page on a new site can wait weeks or never be indexed; that unassisted case is unbounded and is why submission methods exist.
Crawl response time, by method
Time from submission to the first verified Googlebot request in our server logs (crawler IPs verified against Google's reverse DNS):
| Expedited submission | 3 to 130 seconds, median about 8 seconds, across ten submissions (ten out of ten responded within about two minutes). Most recent measurement: 4 seconds. |
|---|---|
| Search Console request (free) | 77 seconds (one measurement). |
| Budget-tier submission | About 2.5 hours to first crawl (one measurement); settles in days rather than minutes by design. |
Time to indexed, by method
Time from submission to the page being confirmed in Google's index:
| Expedited submission | 2 minutes to 6 hours, median about 5 minutes, across nine indexed pages. Seven of nine were indexed within 35 minutes. |
|---|---|
| Search Console request (free) | About 2.7 hours (one measurement): crawled fast, indexed slowly. |
| No submission at all | Unbounded. Pages on new or weakly linked sites can sit undiscovered or in "crawled, currently not indexed" for weeks. We are currently measuring this case with real third-party pages (below). |
Third-party pages: submission versus waiting
In our pre-registered backlink pilot, new
articles on other publishers' sites are split between an expedited-submission
arm and an untouched control arm. Early result, updating as checkpoints
complete: both submitted pages were confirmed indexed the same day they
were published (within about 7 hours); the control pages, including
one the publisher itself submitted through its own Search Console, were still
unindexed at the same checks. Per-placement timestamps:
/data/pilot-log.json.
Recrawling an already-indexed page
After rewriting our homepage and resubmitting it, Google's search results showed the new title within the hour. Details and caveats: the recrawl measurement.
Methodology, honestly stated
- Crawl timestamps come from our own server logs with the crawler's IP verified against Google's reverse DNS, never from a provider dashboard.
- Indexing is confirmed via Google's Search Console URL Inspection API for pages we own, and via live search-results checks for third-party pages (a probabilistic tier, labeled as such).
- Sample sizes are stated and small: this is one young site plus a handful of third-party placements, measured completely, not a survey. The dataset grows and this page updates with it.
- These numbers describe crawling and indexing only. Indexing is admission to Google, not ranking. Nothing here supports any claim about ranking speed.
- We sell an indexing service, so treat our framing accordingly: every
figure links to raw data at
/data/crawl-log.jsonso you can check it without trusting us.