New article posts not indexed by Google

Hi Jambalaya,

Google’s Search Console
It’s a very useful tool! But it lags about two to three days behind Google’s Search Engine. So if you’re talking about more recent posts, it’s not the tool for the job.

The tool for the job is Google.com:
It contains what you’re aiming for, after all.
To check whether your post has been indexed, copy the post’s URL and place “site:” in front of it. Like so:

site:https://example.com/path/to/my/post/

If it returns the post, then it’s indexed!

But if it isn’t found in Google yet
Give it some time! Google gets millions of new pages to crawl every day.

It also depends on how well your site is built, and more importantly: How much authority it has.
News Sites’ their content is also very important to index quickly, so they should be higher up in their queue.

Read their FAQ on this subject.

If you wish to speed up the process, you should go to “Crawl -> Fetch As Google”, and ask them to “Fetch and Render”.
More info…

About the sitemap
Make sure it pings to Google!

You might have missed it, but TSF’s sitemap does have lastmod, it’s even DST sensitive (one of the many unlisted features) ??

I hope this helps! If you still have questions, let me know ??

• This reply was modified 7 years, 10 months ago by Sybre Waaijer.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 10 months ago by Sybre Waaijer. Reason: formatting: stray backtick

Hi Sybre,

Thanks for your prompt reply!

I feel like a dumb. Indeed the articles are well indexed. I’m probably giving the console too much credit about that.

Do you think I should switch to your own sitemap builder instead of the current plugin I use? Sounds good for lastmod, but what about category pages? (I’d like to tell Google and friends when a category is updated with a new post) Sorry I don’t know what “DST sensitive” is ??

I also have another question regarding Google crawling. I don’t know if this is due to the plugin or to the theme I’m using. But when I’m testing a category page (with your method), Google shows in the ranking page a date that is not the one of the last article published, but the date of the last article shown in the list at the bottom. However, if I’m correct, Google considers this date as important for the rankink (but maybe not) so I’d like to fix this. I have the same problem with my home page, the date shown in the ranking is set as the launch date of the blog and not as the date of the last article published.

Hi Jambalaya,

Don’t worry about it ?? We’re all here to learn!

While we’re on that subject:
DST is Daylight Saving Time, which is used in non-tropical countries to adjust time schedules for winter and summer. So the clock traverses a little one way or the other relative to GMT and UTC, which can make things a bit wonky for computers.
Without this correction, some post might seem to be published in the future according to the sitemap; which is impossible.
The SEO Framework calculates and adjusts this, but it’s for as far as I can tell really a gimmick for Google, and it’s a result of perfection.

The SEO Framework doesn’t include archives in its sitemap, as I believe it to be the job of the theme to tell about them. In the end, Google doesn’t need nor really cares about a sitemap. It really just needs a working website, internal links, and backlinks.

Ultimately, it’s up to you what to use. Both sitemaps are great in respects of fast indexing, which is the main (and for most the only) goal after all.

About your other question:
I believe your goal shouldn’t be ranking for archives. Ultimately, the user wants content that answers their questions or fulfills their needs for information, not a list of plausible related content.

Nevertheless, the outdated updated time of the archive is either a result of Google’s reluctance of crawling that archive, or a wrong indication in the sitemap. I can’t tell for sure without obtaining the link of that you’ve tested this against, and I might be steering in the opposite direction.

Hi Sybre,

Thanks!

Actually I’m trying to have good ranking for my archives pages because they aren’t not build on specific tags but on major topics for which I’m looking for SEO visibility. I’m using the category archives as pages with a description ??

Here’s an example link you asked for: https://www.ooparc.com/blog/disneyland-paris-actualite/

If you check using site:XXX on Google, the date shown in the ranking for that specific page is “August 6th” which is the date of the oldest post on the bottom of the list. As for the sitemap (see sitemap-tax-category.xml), the indication looks good as the last modified date is April 24th. ??

Hi @jambalaya44,

Could you sign up for Google Webmasters, and select your website on this page?

Ask Google to “Fetch and Render” that specific archive page, wait for a day or three, and report back if the shown date has changed.

I’m very interested in the results! Thanks ??

Hi @jambalaya44,

It seems all your latest posts are now found in Google ??

If you have any more questions, feel free to open up a new support topic!

Hi Sybre,

Sorry for my late reply!

Time flies and I did not have the time to ask Googe to fetch and render as you suggest :-/

You are right, the display of the results has changed because the date doesn’t appear anymore for most of the pages. Not all of them. I guess it’s because it’s confusing for their robots, they don’t know which date to choose. I will work on that in the future. Maybe it’s due to my theme. I’ll try by adding a “last modified” line on the page description.

Thanks again for your help and the follow-up !