Overview
Once signed off by all parties, a date will be agreed on when a dev is available to publish the site. We would recommend publishing at the start of the week when there are developers and service members available to support. This should provide adequate cover in case an issues arise.
This involves adding the site to the live environment and hooking up the domain.
It could take up to 2 weeks for Google to crawl and list the site properly, so don’t worry if it does not instantly appear at the top.
What Is Crawling?
Crawling is how Google finds and updates web pages.
It uses a robot called Googlebot to move from one page to another by following links.
How It Works
Website owners (Digital team) can help Google find pages by submitting them through Search Console or using a sitemap (a file that lists all the pages and how they’re organised).
Google also finds pages on its own, based on how popular or useful they seem.
What Affects Crawling
Google decides which pages to crawl based on:
- Popularity: Pages with lots of good links from other sites.
- Freshness: How often the page is updated.
- Speed: How fast and responsive the site is.
- Demand: How important or interesting the page is to users.
- Rules: What the site allows Google to crawl (set in files like robots.txt or in page settings).
How long will this take?
Responsibility – Digital team
Timescale – 1 day