How to get your new SaaS indexed by Google

A new site is not on Google until Google has found it, crawled it and decided it is worth keeping. None of that happens because you launched. It happens because something points Google at your pages, and nothing on those pages tells it to go away.

Google's own documentation says crawling can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. You cannot skip that wait, but you can make sure it starts today and that nothing resets it.

The short answer

Verify the domain in Google Search Console. Submit a sitemap. Request indexing for your home page and your two or three most important pages. Get at least one link to your site from a page Google already crawls. Then check that no page you care about says noindex, and wait.

1. Verify the site in Search Console

Google Search Console is the only place Google tells you what it thinks of your site. Add a Domain property rather than a URL prefix one: it is verified with a single DNS TXT record and covers every version of the site at once, www and bare, http and https, and every subdomain.

A URL prefix property only covers the exact address you typed. Add the bare domain as a prefix property while your site lives on www, and half your data is somewhere you are not looking.

2. Submit a sitemap

A sitemap is a file, usually at /sitemap.xml, listing every page you want indexed. Google reads it to find pages it has no link to yet, which on a new site is most of them.

Submit it in Search Console under Sitemaps. Then list it in robots.txt with a line like Sitemap: https://yourapp.com/sitemap.xml, so every other search engine finds it too.

On Next.js, an app/sitemap.ts file generates it for you, and app/robots.ts does the same for robots.txt. Most frameworks and site builders have an equivalent.

Two rules keep a sitemap useful. List only pages you want in search: no login pages, no admin, no thank-you pages. And list only the final address of each page, the one it does not redirect from. A sitemap full of redirects teaches Google to trust it less.

3. Request indexing for the pages that matter

Paste a URL into the URL Inspection bar at the top of Search Console. If it says the URL is not on Google, press Request indexing. This puts the page in a priority queue for crawling.

It has a small daily limit and it is not a guarantee, so spend it on the pages that earn traffic: the home page, pricing, and the one or two pages that answer a question someone would search for. Requesting the same page every day does not make it faster.

Two shortcuts that do not work for this. The Google Indexing API is only for job postings and livestream pages, and Google says so in its documentation. IndexNow is supported by Bing, Yandex and a few others, and is worth adding for them, but Google does not use it.

4. Get one link from a page Google already crawls

A sitemap tells Google a page exists. A link from an established site tells it the page is worth visiting. On a brand new domain, the link usually does more.

It does not need to be a big one. A listing on a directory Google crawls every day, a Show HN post, a GitHub README, or your own profile on a site people already read is enough to get the first crawl moving. That is the honest reason directory listings still help a new product: not the link equity, the discovery. This guide has the longer version, and the directory list sorts them by domain rating.

What keeps a launched site out of Google

These are the problems behind most "why am I not indexed" posts. Check them before you wait.

A noindex left over from staging

The most common one. A staging site is told not to be indexed with a <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> tag or an X-Robots-Tag: noindex header, and the setting ships to production with it. Open your live page, view the source, and search for noindex. Check the response headers too.

robots.txt blocking the crawl

A Disallow: / in robots.txt stops Google fetching anything. It also stops Google reading a noindex tag, so a blocked page can still show up in results as a bare URL with no description. To keep a page out of search, allow the crawl and use noindex. To get a page in, allow the crawl and remove noindex.

Content that only exists after JavaScript runs

Google renders JavaScript, but later and less reliably than it reads HTML. A single page app that sends an empty <div id="root"> and builds everything in the browser is indexed slowly, and sometimes as the empty shell. If your marketing pages are built that way, render them on the server or pre-render them at build time.

Two addresses for the same page

www and bare, http and https, a trailing slash and none, a preview deployment on a platform's own domain. Each is a separate page to Google. Pick one address, redirect every other version to it with a 301, and put a canonical tag on each page pointing at itself.

Pages too thin to keep

Google finding a page is not Google keeping it. In the Pages report you will see pages marked discovered or crawled, but currently not indexed. On a new site the usual reason is that the page says too little: a pricing page with three numbers, a feature page with one sentence, a blog with five posts of two hundred words.

The fix is more substance on fewer pages, not more pages. One page that fully answers a question beats ten that each half answer it.

How to check it worked

Search Console's Pages report is the real answer. It shows what is indexed and, for everything that is not, the reason. Give it a few days after verifying before you trust it.

A site:yourapp.com search on Google gives a rough picture, not an exact count. Use it to see whether you are there at all, not to count pages.

The first month, in order

1. Day one: verify the Domain property, submit the sitemap, request indexing for three pages.
2. The same week: get listed on two or three places Google already crawls. The directory submission checklist covers what to prepare.
3. Week two: open the Pages report and fix anything listed with a reason you can act on.
4. From then on: add pages that answer real questions, and link each new one from a page that is already indexed.

Being indexed is the start, not the win. It means you can rank. What decides whether you do is whether your pages answer the search better than the ones already there, and how you describe the product is a good place to start.

If you want a first link from a page Google crawls every day, listing an app here is free.