Written on October 4th, 2007 at 05:10 am by Darren Rowse
Google’s Speedy Indexing of Blogs
Just minutes after my post about WidgetBucks went live it was indexed by Google. Readers reported seeing it ranked #1 for ‘widgetbucks’ just a few minutes after the post went up. I checked after 20 minutes and saw this - note the time reference ‘23 minutes ago’.
Lara noticed the same thing during the first prize giveaway yesterday on ProBlogger. That post ranked highly in Google within minutes of being posted.
I’m not sure how wide spread it is, but I’ve tested it with 10 or so other well known blogs and see the same thing and have heard a few bloggers reporting similar things in the past few days.
It looks like Google could be using Google Blog Search results in their main search queries to give Google users a more up to date search result - something that puts bloggers at a distinct advantage over other kinds of more static sites.
63 Responses to “Google’s Speedy Indexing of Blogs”
Anthony Lawrence
October 4th, 2007 5:15 am
It’s frighteningly fast.
Last week I wrote something, published it, and then literally seconds later wanted to check some fact relevant to the post, googled for whatever that was, and there was my post in position 4.. scary..
Dave
October 4th, 2007 5:21 am
I’ve noticed the same thing. My posts are typically in the SERPs before they even hit Google Reader, for the past few months.
It would be interesting to see if it’s only blogs with FeedBurner feeds that get indexed in this manner.
Alex
October 4th, 2007 5:22 am
This is funny :)
Just a few minutes ago I have posted an article somewhat resembling your post but I tend to think that there is a lot more to relevancy that Google places on blogs and that this performance is based on their recent purchase of FeedBurner as well as their own internal developments …
Alex
Sam Smith
October 4th, 2007 5:23 am
That’s good to hear!
I’m glad google realizes that the first people to report something often are bloggers due to the mainstream media’s need to organize and verify the latest news before they present it
David at free Christian resources
October 4th, 2007 5:24 am
That is great news for us bloggers!
Sadly it will be some time before my blog can leap to the top of the google rank pile but when it can this added functionality will really help ;)
Chris Jacobson
October 4th, 2007 5:29 am
Yep, I commented on your post about that. I was a little surprised. The only other time I’ve seen a blog indexed that fast is when TMZ reports breaking news on their site or something.
Michael Boateng
October 4th, 2007 5:35 am
Wow … Google now falling on bloggers for the latest news and information? That is good news.
Does your blog need a higher PR to be able to get listed in the search results??
nika
October 4th, 2007 5:39 am
google hearts bloggers.
By giving bloggers that edge (we have had that google love for a long time) blogging will be come even more feverishly cultivated by businesses - sometimes not such a good thing because they come to blogging for PR versus to blog. That in itself is not a “bad” thing it just makes for inefficient blogging.
Vik Dulat - Making Money the Easy Wayq
October 4th, 2007 5:42 am
That is sweet for all the bloggers including me :)
Chris Jacobson
October 4th, 2007 5:46 am
Does Google pick up blogs automatically or do you need to submit it Google Blog Search?
Jeff
October 4th, 2007 5:51 am
Back in July I saw a post of mine about the snow in Buenos Aires get indexed within 30 minutes and at the top spot.
It later dropped in the rankings as the BBC and other news outlet reported the story. Now, it has dropped entirely out of the top 10 pages for that search in Google BUT it’s still on the first page of Google Blog search. That seems very strange. And why do blogs appear in Google’s main search page results but not in Google Blog search? Indeed, as I examine these SERPs further I see a blog I know with a PR of 3 on the first SERP and my own blog with a 5 PR isn’t to be found though it has the #1 spot for “buenos aires blog”…I don’t know…guess it’s best just to keep blogging and not worry about these abnormalities too much?
Walter Wimberly
October 4th, 2007 6:01 am
I’d be willing to bet that the speed of indexing has to do more so with size (number of post/pages) and/or posts per day and using a tool like Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator for WordPress (http://www.arnebrachhold.de/projects/wordpress-plugins/google-xml-sitemaps-generator/) than just searching blogs.
Sonia Simone
October 4th, 2007 6:02 am
Michael, it all depends on what people are searching for. If I google my business name, “remarkable communication,” I pop right to the top even though I have a PR of 0, because there are few other sites with those search terms. A site like Problogger with the healthy PR of 6 will win higher placement for more searches.
PR is only one component of how Google determines placement, but the same theory applies across the board, once you’re indexed.
Brad V.
October 4th, 2007 6:11 am
Interesting observation! I think you’re right about Google adding Blog Search results into the normal search results. It makes sense because bloggers usually are up-to-the-minute on their topic anyway, so blogs are a great source of updated information.
I’m starting to use Google’s Blog Search function more and more. I’m not only looking for new blogs to add to my Reader list, but also I want to see what others are saying about various news of the day.
Jay Thompson
October 4th, 2007 6:13 am
“I’m not sure how wide spread it is, but I’ve tested it with 10 or so other well known blogs and see the same thing…”
It doesn’t just happen with well-known blogs. My lowly real estate blog gets posts *rapidy* indexed, and well ranked.
A post this morning ranks on page 1 for “Phoenix real estate sales stats”. That may not seem like a powerful term for most, but it’s golden for a real estate agent.
Blogging Tips for Bloggers
October 4th, 2007 6:14 am
Yes you are correct they are using blogger search to maximize search and availability of content.
Chris Coyier
October 4th, 2007 6:14 am
I’ve been noticing this too. I think it’s great for bloggers as well as your average google users. I know I am happy as a clam when I search for something and a really recent article pops up as #1 and not some old article that has been around for years soaking up links and SEO crap. I want fresh!
Eric Atkins
October 4th, 2007 6:20 am
Wow Google.
I’ve got from 1k-2k uniques per day to 20k-30k uniques per day recently with the release of Halo 3. Almost all of the traffic is coming in via Google, Mahalo, and other search engines.
Sure Halo 3 was just released, but are there really that many users searching for Halo 3 information? Almost all of the traffic is coming into articles (blogs) that we’ve recently written at http://hushedcasket.com/
Koen
October 4th, 2007 6:21 am
I suspect my very small blog of having that same effect too. That will say, one time when I checked, it was indexed SOOOO quickly :)
Mark
October 4th, 2007 6:54 am
It’s not just well-known blogs, either - my no-name blog was showing results for a post I posted the same day. This is the way real-time search should be; nice work, GoogleMasters!
Anthony Lawrence
October 4th, 2007 7:04 am
Chris Jacobson: “Does Google pick up blogs automatically or do you need to submit it Google Blog Search?”
Google picks up active sites automatically, but if you are using Feedburner (and why not - even if you prefer something else, there’s no harm in letting them at your feed) they may be picking up from there very quickly - it sure looks that way..
Collin
October 4th, 2007 8:01 am
Can someone tell me how to check my google rank. I am new to this kind of stuff and can’t tell.
Deaf Musician
October 4th, 2007 8:03 am
It maybe because they are running the “Google Webmaster Tools” so it knows when to pick up stuff.
Nelson
October 4th, 2007 8:03 am
is this what SEO experts call ” google everflux” because it seems to fluctuates in the rankings, sometimes it shows up at first page and sometimes is not there at all!!
Tony E
October 4th, 2007 8:09 am
I have noticed the same result with resent posts :)
Phil
October 4th, 2007 8:38 am
first time i’ve seen anything getting indexed that fast, i’ll have to see if my blogs the same.
simon
October 4th, 2007 8:38 am
Great found!!
But seems Google bog doesn’t like my blog.
John
October 4th, 2007 8:41 am
I’ve found also, that even with a brand new blog, if you generate a sitemap and submit it using googles webmasters tools, they will index your site. It took about a day for my new blog.
Google Tutor
October 4th, 2007 8:41 am
it could be feedburner but Cutts himself has commented on the G index being fresh within a few minutes. feedburner is highly suspect, but when you have fresh content multiple times per day it’s hard to say these days.
Darren Rowse
October 4th, 2007 9:06 am
I suspect this will be the same for most blogs in their blog search index - however keep in mind that some blogs will rank higher in the results than others. I guess blogs that they see as having more authority (due to their age, # of income links etc) will rank higher in these quick results than newer and less established blogs. ProBlogger does pretty well in normal search results - so I guess it will do well in these too.
Sonia Simone
October 4th, 2007 9:21 am
I was curious, so I just Googled linkbait boot camp (no quotes). My static site came up first, which is nice. There were a few stories about Apple’s Boot Camp, and a few problogger links about this competition, and then my post from my itty bitty blog. So it’s not just the big guys who are getting indexed very quickly.
Shane
October 4th, 2007 10:13 am
What is even more interesting is that when I created my blog just about a month ago it was on Google and getting hits from search results within hours….maybe something to do with pinging update services…
Brian Humphrey
October 4th, 2007 10:55 am
Darren,
For more than a year, our (LAFD News & Information) blog has been routinely indexed by Google - especially their Google News site, within 5 minutes. It is not only a tremendous asset for those of us offering timely content, but also a benefit to those we proudly serve.
Please keep up the great work. Day in and day out, your site remains one of our ‘must read’ blogs.
Respectfully Yours in Safety and Service,
Brian Humphrey
Firefighter/Specialist
Public Service Officer
Los Angeles Fire Department
Carib Web Development
October 4th, 2007 11:46 am
Yay for google!!!!
wallstreetfighter
October 4th, 2007 11:57 am
I didn’t want to give away any secrets but I post on “hot” topics and quickly move to the top. I am not proud of it but I was the top search for a while on Fat Britney, Britney VMAs, and other Britney sucks at the VMA stuff. All from one post.
JMorris
October 4th, 2007 12:01 pm
Wordpress Blog + Feedburner + Google Sitmaps + Pingomatic + MyBlogLog Profile + Technorati Profile = Wicked Fast Google Indexing
With no backlinks, no Adsense, and without telling anyone about my site, my latest blog was fully indexed and had top ranking for the broad word combination (1,280,000 SERPs) that I wanted to corner for my branding within a day. I waited 24 hours before checking, so I can’t narrow it down more than that.
Call it a gimme from Google, but I’ll take it!
A Blog about Nothing
October 4th, 2007 12:34 pm
I’m not one to complain… ok well actually I am… Anyhow you state that it puts bloggers at a distinct advantage over more static sites. More accurately put it puts big named bloggers at a distinct advantage over everyone. Because if this is indeed what happens all the SEO efforts in the world are going to have very little impact on getting out little blogs ranked up there. All you or any of the other big blogging names would have to do is write a new article to get back in that top slot.
Happiegrrrl
October 4th, 2007 12:54 pm
I noticed a similar effect. I’d made a post announcing a Fred Beckey slideshow in my area(he’s a famous American mountaineer with 60 years experience), and when I went to check my stats the next day, I saw one of the visitors “came from” a Google search on his name. Clicking the link to see just how many pages back my link was in the list - imagine my shock at seeing it at the number one spot(with the time info listed).
While that made me very happy, I had two thoughts very quickly. The first being that…if I was looking for information, I’d want the BEST link first, not the newest. I guess people will just need to define their searches more precisely in the future to achieve that result.
The second was a dreadful concern - Realizing the need to be constantly updating the top keywords I feel might drive the best traffic to my site in searches….
Wendy Piersall
October 4th, 2007 1:05 pm
Like the others, I’ve noticed this as well. Although if you don’t get a lot of click-throughs on your result in the SERP, the ranking drops almost as quickly, in a week or two.
On posts that are that have well-worded headlines and that both attract and keep search engine visitors, that high ranking will last a lot longer. Also, if the post gets popular on social media sites, it will also add to your ’staying power’.
I have a couple of posts that have stayed on the first page for a really long time, but interestingly, those posts are not as popular with my regular readers. They are posts that tend to be more business-focused and keyword-rich.
For example, I wrote a post about getting laid off from a job while on maternity leave, that was a total flop with my readers. But to this day I get daily visits to the article. (Kind of sad that so many women get laid on on maternity leave, eh?!)
Donald Mckenzie Jr
October 4th, 2007 1:09 pm
To be honest google is getting much faster at indexing blogs. I created my blog yesterday, and now today it shows up in the search engines.
Tom Hanna
October 4th, 2007 1:29 pm
I haven’t actually seen this from the Google side, but I’ve been noticing in my referral logs that Google’s main search has been sending users to new posts within a matter of hours. This definitely gives bloggers who post early and post often an advantage whenever some hot topic hits the news.
Alcohol
October 4th, 2007 2:19 pm
Google really does have their finger on the blog world. I’ve heard people talking about this for a few days too.
Blog Opinion
October 4th, 2007 3:02 pm
Yeah ! If you have have continues activity on your blog .Google crawler crawls your pages with high frequency. Page of your domain, title used you matters.
Roman
October 4th, 2007 7:39 pm
Yah, I noticed that also on my site yesterday. When I had published a post in several minutes I got results in Google. It seems promising :)…
steffen
October 4th, 2007 8:24 pm
Yes, i realized that on the 19th Sep. when I published a post and just one hour later the first reader came via Google with the relevant keywords
Daniel Condurachi
October 4th, 2007 8:36 pm
Over the time I observed that Google gives more credit to blogs than to any other types of websites. That is why I recommend to my clients to have a blog type website. It is also easier for them to administer. Most of the clients want a simple, few pages sites.
Eliena Andrews
October 4th, 2007 9:26 pm
That’s good news for all of us, right… Google is making really huge changes these days… dunno what’s going on with em….
Eliena
Eduard Blacquière
October 4th, 2007 10:37 pm
I think the high posting frequency makes a high crawling frequency for ProBlogger.
Also the ‘Query Deserves Freshness’ Algorithm does a nice job in showing fresh content, as the Inside-look-at-Google-article of the New York Times explains:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/business/yourmoney/03google.html?ei=5088&en=f003a2b328ec0a72&ex=1338523200&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
Paul
October 4th, 2007 10:59 pm
I notice that a post I published that day start earning visitors from Google that same day. Google definitely loves blogs.
Michael
October 4th, 2007 11:26 pm
I have some observations from my multiple blogs that may (or may not) contribute to the analysis of this phenomenon.
First, I have a comment for “Jay” the Phoenix real estate broker. A PR5 is not a “lowly” blog as you have suggested … ProBlogger is only at a PR6!
Now on to the analysis. I have multiple blogs that I post on each day: PR0 w/o Feedburner, PR3 w/feedburner, and another PR3 w/feedburner.
Only one of these blogs gets indexed “daily”. I haven’t narrowed it down any closer than that, but I do know that it is within 24 hrs. It is the PR3 blog w/ feedburner.
However, this is NOT the blog that gets the most posts. That would be the other PR3 blog w/feedburner. Both blogs are configured exactly the same with feedburner.
There are a few differences on the blog that is indexed the fastest, and these may yield the key to this phenomenon. This particular blog has these optimization plugins in place (I installed them after reading an SEO article):
Dagon Design Sitemap Generator
Head META Description
Permalink Redirect
Ultimate Tag Warrior
These are all related to optimization, and one of them (or a combination of them) could be the culprit to quick placement. Anyone else experiencing this phenomenon want to confirm if you have these in your Wordpress blog?
Ivan
October 5th, 2007 12:07 am
With a PR of 0 I got crawled in less than 8hrs and ranking in 8th for target keyword of my latest post. I probably got crawled faster but I didn’t really check to see until I read this post.
Jean Paul
October 5th, 2007 1:39 am
Hi, my name is jean paul geoffroy im from Chile, And just wanna say Congratulation for your Blog, I love it. (Sorry my English) Bye …..
B Carter
October 5th, 2007 4:25 am
I just did a search for my new blog with my post for today plus my domain name and the same results do not seem to be the case with me. In the big G’s defense, I think I need to go back and look at my tags a little closer.
Goe D
October 5th, 2007 7:26 am
This is cool. I made a google search for “bash giveaway ebenta” and i got it indexed by Google quick pointing me to problogger’s post where I commented on. But I beleive Google only did this to the well-published blog.
gaman
October 6th, 2007 12:17 am
While I’m certain that Google loves blog, I don’t think speedy indexing is limited to blogs alone. A site’s update frequency and PageRank may play some rules.
Graham Jones - Internet Psychologist
October 6th, 2007 12:59 am
My blog entry just made it to number 2 on Google (out of 5,080) within 12 minutes.
http://www.grahamjones.co.uk/2007/10/make-most-of-online-opportunities.htm
Rednights
October 7th, 2007 3:47 pm
I see the same thing happening.
I have a PR of 0.
I post infrequently.
But two of my post (literally I did 2 posts in this month) were #1-2 in Google 30 minutes after I hit the Publish button. Just goes to show that way too many websites in my niche, have no idea how to SEO.
pixelhandler
November 11th, 2007 7:31 pm
Wow, this post has a lost of comments. I’m using a Wordpress blog and the all in one SEO plugin; I launched a new site for a friend that took 3 days to get indexed by Google. I also am using the Google sitemaps plugin for WordPress. It seams like Google is very responsive to their sitemaps. Check out my audio post on this subject at pixelhandler.com.
Jaron
December 13th, 2007 5:25 pm
Some very interesting comments. From what I can tell… Google will keep your quickly indexed new blog post if it contain popular content that is being searched for… otherwise it is dropped after 48 hours.
Dale
January 11th, 2008 1:39 am
Google does not know that you have a blog or a web site. It crawls your pages all the same. The reason blogs are indexed more oftent and more effeciently is because blogs tend to be properly structured using CSS and lots of easy to index HTML. If you want ot speed up your indexing more, there is a tool that actually goes out and proactively announces each post you do in real time, telling the spiders that your blog has new content. It also automatically sends snipits to some of their vertical directories and give you an automatic inbound link. Its pretty cool but check it out at http://www.moguling.com
misty
February 20th, 2008 8:53 am
My blog was indexed by end of Dec, 2007, three days after it was registered with Google Addurl program. My blog appears to be ranked the first item on page 1 IF and Only If I google the Title of my blog. Same case for some of other blogs that I have tested.
It is not ranked at all if I Google words, phrases or paragraphs that exist in my posts. Why is that? How can I fix the problem? Thanks.
Regarding Jay Thompson Oct 24, 07 comments,
“A post this morning ranks on page 1 for “Phoenix real estate sales stats”…”, it seems that that blog’s title is “Phoenix Home Sale Stats”, which might be the reason that it was ranked on page 1.
“thompsonsrealty.com” is not found on page 1 if googling “Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service” which exist on its home page.
misty
February 21st, 2008 5:29 am
Uh, I’ve just found out that Google Search ranks my blog on page 1 for certain phrases and paragraphs, but not some people’s names. Will need to work on those people’s names…
Katalog Stron
February 27th, 2008 12:25 am
That’s a great news for bloggers! At least for most of them.
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