The big question.

We totally understand, it’s exciting for your website to go live.

The first thing all new website owners want to do is type their business name into the Google search box and see their website.

Unfortunately, much to your dismay it doesn’t appear immediately, or even for a few weeks when you keep searching.

So why is this?

You’ve just paid for a brand, spanking new website so why isn’t appearing on Google?

Let’s first look at how a Search Engine works…

Search Engines are huge databases full of webpages. Due to the volume of information being searched, and the way in which it’s linked together, it’s not possible to search in real-time.

There are literally billions of webpages available to read on the internet. Trillions of words to read and this simply cannot be searched through in the blink of an eye by even the most advanced system available at this time.

So the best way to search for something quickly is to have the information ready and in place to look through. If you’re searching for something, you’re always going to be more successful if you know where to look. Google therefore is constantly preparing itself for searches by indexing and categorising webpages by relevance and popularity so that it can retrieve it’s best result as fast as possible. If you search for ‘Shoes’ for example, then Google will already be bringing back results only for pages mentioning the word ‘Shoes’ before you even hit enter!

Google is always one step ahead and it does this by a very common sense method…

Google is constantly searching the web as it prepares to be used for your needs. It stays ahead by sending out ‘web spiders’, a technical term used to describe the programme search engines use to crawl through web pages for keywords and relevant information that it thinks would be good as a result for a search term. These programmes run 24/7 – 365 days a year. They never stop so that they can stay as up to date as possible. However, as quick and as constant as these spiders are, they can’t do every website and every page on the internet at once. It takes time and it’s work is never finished.

“Search Engines have special automated programs called ‘spiders’ that ‘crawl’ the web, indexing web pages. The spiders create a copy—or snapshot—of the page periodically. So when you conduct a search on Google, Google is actually searching the snapshot (which is held on its own servers) rather than what’s on your site.”
– Texelate

What this means is that the ‘snapshot’ is rarely the most up to date version of the page that exists. Google will have to come around again at some point to update it.

That is why a new website may not even appear on Google at all as soon as it’s launched. It needs to be indexed first by the spiders and that can take time, which can be anything from 4 days to 4 weeks.

You’ll be glad to know there are a few ways you give Google  a nudge. Check out our blog on the 5 actions you can take as soon as your website goes live for more information.

Essentially though. the bedding in of your new website will take some time and you will need to be patient. It will happen, and then you can ask us the next question; “How do I get to the top of Google?’!!

Unfortunately, that is not as easy to answer (unless you would like to spend a fortune on Google Ads) As a first step, we’d recommend reading our ‘What is SEO?’ blog post.

For more information about website indexing and SEO and increasing your search engine rankings get in touch or visit our website for further details.

Don’t forgot, we offer comprehensive SEO packages with our Nettl Partners.