Using Fetch as Googlebot in Webmaster Tools

If Google search results is displaying an old result for your website, it’s likely Google needs to re-crawl and index your website. The Fetch as Googlebot tool will allow you to see your webpage as Google sees it. The Fetch as Googlebot tool can be benficial if your website has been hacked as well. If you search for your website in Google, and you see results for a hacked page or frequently spammed terms. Once your website is verified in WebMaster Tools, you can use Fetch as Googlebot to understand what Google sees on your website. Because the source code of your website may appear normal, this hack may be difficult without Fetch as Googlebot.

You must have a WebMaster Tools account and your site must be verified with Google. Please see our article on WebMaster Tools for more information.

How to use Fetch as Googlebot

  1. Log into Google Webmaster Tools
  2. Click on the website you want to work with
  3. Go to Diagnostics
  4. Click on “Fetch as GoogleBot
  5. fetch_1

  6. In the text field, type the path to the page you want to check
  7. fetch_2

  8. From the Dropdown list, select the type of fetch you’d like to perform. If you want to see what the GoogleBot sees select “Web“. If you want to see what Googlebot-Mobile sees, select “Mobile XHTML/WML
  9. Click “Fetch
  10. You can use this tool to fetch up to 500 URLs a week. If Googlebot can successfully fetch your webpage, you can submit that webpage to the Google index. To do this, click “Submit to Google Index”. Fetch as Googlebot does not follow redirects.

    fetch_3

    For more step-by-step guides and practical tips, visit our Drupal Education Channel.

Carrie Smaha
Carrie Smaha Senior Manager Marketing Operations

Carrie enjoys working on demand generation and product marketing projects that tap into multi-touch campaign design, technical SEO, content marketing, software design, and business operations.

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23 thoughts on “Using Fetch as Googlebot in Webmaster Tools

  1. How long does it typically take to index a webpage? I created my site https://www.homeinspectionnewark.com and it took about 2 weeks, but then after adding a page https://www.homeinspectionnewark.com/essex-county.html it still hasn’t come up from what I can tell. If you get a redirect after using fetch, does that hurt your search results at all? I have done some research and I know how hurtful some things can be regarding your site and redirects – is this the same instance?

    1. Hello and thanks for contacting us. I recommend you contact Google to recrawl your website. The SEO aspect depends on your redirect type (302, 301, etc.).

  2. I just added a page to two of my web sites www.absolutelyspotlessmold.com and to www.absolutelyspotlessmoldny.com  I did a Google Fetch and Render. Got a response of Partial. I look 1 hour later and now Google shows the updated rendering of the page correctly. However my keyword search results are still not changing. Any idea how long it actually takes for the pages search results to change?   

    1. Hello Philip,

      Google’s keyword updates is typically dependent on how well your page ranks for that content. When they update it is completely up to them. Here’s an article from Google that describes. Apologies that we can’t provide any definitive answer.

      Regards,
      Arnel C.

  3. One of my domain is not getting indexed on google I had baught a day before. Submitted it to webmaster but till not it has not been indexed by google. Why is it so if its the problem with domain how can i confirm it buecaus its a brand new domain that i booked

    1. Hello Arsh,

      Thank you fr contacting us. It is difficult to say when Google will crawl your website, since it is completely under their control. Sometimes they will crawl for new content within a day, and other times several weeks/months

      I recommend using Google’s Webmaster Tools, since you can request that they reconsider crawling your website. There are also other helpful tools there, that can help better manage and generate traffic to your site.

      Thank you,
      John-Paul

  4. Hi

    When i fetch 300 urls in google webmaster tool, why is it only showing 100 fetched URLS?

    Could you let me know.

     

    Thanks

    Sneh

    1. Hello Sneh,

      Thanks for the question. I’m not sure where you are looking in the tool, but it may be that you’re only showing so many of the results on the page. Also, when I went looking through Google’s documentation, I found this statement:

      Q: I know I have [one / several / dozens of ] links that Webmaster Tools isn’t showing. What gives?
      A: Although the link reports in Webmaster Tools are more comprehensive than doing a [link:example.com] query in Google search, they may not include 100% of all links that you know about. This is normal and should not be cause for alarm. Webmaster Tools does not always show 100% of the links that Google knows about, so just because a particular link doesn’t appear in Webmaster Tools doesn’t mean that Google doesn’t know about that link, or that your site isn’t “getting credit” for that link.

      (from WebMaster Tools FAQ.

      You may need to inquire with Google for a more exact answer, but it does appear to be normal behavior in WebMaster tools.

      Regards,
      Arnel C.

  5. Hi, I’m using standart hosting on my website.

    www.heritagelocksmith.com

    and installed a woocommerce store on directory

    www.heritagelocksmith.com/blog

    How to fetch the code to look like it is one website for google?

     

    Thanks ahead, Amir.

    1. I’m not sure what you’re referring to. Everything is already considered a single site in the eyes of search engine bots as they share a domain and link to one another.

  6. Fetch and Render has a bug. It shows redirect where a redirect doesn’t exist! It seems best to just fetch the source code and check that.

    1. It can help, but keep in mind that it can take some time for Google to update their index. Unfortunately, not too much can be done except to wait for Google to update their index of your site.

  7. hi, my personal website is cms based i developed using codeigniter. when we type the website name (i.e) www.websitesdevelopments.com , i had set the redirect to www.websitesdevelopments.com/home just to make it look a bit more meaninful/fancy? And i had submitted proper sitemap.xml file to webmaster tool also.

    But google indexed every page except the home page www.websitesdevelopments.com/home .can this problem be solved using “Fetch as Google Bot”?

     

    Thank You

     

  8. Is it a bad thing if the CMS redirects the pages? I have a list of Google crawl requests and each one has a 301 redirect due to WordPress. I don’t know if this will affect my indexing or not.

  9. Hi,

    WHen I click Fetch it says “redirected” in status.

    Also under the heading “Google index > Index Stat >” It shows 0(zero) as total indexed.

     

    Shat am I doing wrong ??

     

    – Mayank

    1. This means that the page your are trying to get redirects to another page. Many content management systems have redirects in place to keep things consistent so if you are entering in www.example.com, it may redirect to example.com and vice versa.

  10. when i do the google fetch an render it is showing ! redirected ? Also when i am looking at the index chart it is showing about the first of the month till now no idexing?

    https://foxdocks.net

    1. Hello Brooke,

      Thank you for contacting us today. If you are finding that your site is not indexed, you can request that Google reconsiders crawling my site.

      Also, make sure your robots.txt file is not blocking google from your site.

      If you have any further questions, feel free to post them below.
      Thank you,

      -John-Paul

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