Google Reveals That Discovering New Pages Takes About 20 Hours

Gary Illyes from Google stated that discovering a new link on the internet usually takes about 20 hours before crawling and indexing begin, according to reporting by PPC Land on a session at the Search Central Live Deep Dive Europe event. The site said the session recap describes these figures as "brand new information", noting that the recaps are an attendee's account and not a Google publication.

He explained that the slowest cases may take weeks or never happen at all, meaning that some pages are never reached by the search engine. This distinction between the discovery phase and the indexing phase helps explain why some new links are slow to appear, especially when launching content tied to a fast-moving event.

The presentation also covered the recovery period following core updates, which was estimated at three to six months, a period much longer than many site owners expect after a decline in their rankings. No specific methodology, sample, or measurement period was published for these numbers, meaning they are internal indicators, not binding benchmarks.

Publishers in the region benefit from these indicators when planning content, as the timing of publishing news becomes a decisive factor in the race for visibility. However, exercising caution when dealing with these numbers remains essential, because they are general estimates that do not consider a site's size, update speed, or authority, and relying on them as a guarantee in predicting rankings is inaccurate.

What do these terms mean?

**Crawling:** A process in which the search engine reads website pages and collects their content. **Indexing:** Storing the collected content in Google's database so that it is available to appear in search results. **Core Update:** A broad change in Google's algorithm and website evaluation method, which usually takes time for its results to stabilize.