Delay between indexing and ranking for new sites?

Question

I would like to know what is the delay between page indexing and ranking for new sites?

Assuming pages are visible with the site command, how much time before one sees them in search results? I have read there can be a significant delay for new websites. Did you observe this on your sites?

I would like to know when should I start wondering whether there is an issue with one of my sites.

Thanks!

Answer 1

If your site is visible with the site: command then your site is already in the search results.

If your site is indexed then it's available in the search results; there is no "delay".

However, there is a delay between crawling and indexing. And the fact that a page is crawled doesn't necessarily mean that it will be indexed.

If your site is indexed and visible when you do a site: search but not for some arbitrary keyword search then this just means that your site is not yet ranking well for that particular search term. Other sites are ranking better.

In order to now improve your ranking you need to do all the usual SEO/SEM stuff... and get people to link to you - this is the time consuming part. If it's a new site then you're obviously not going to have (m)any backlinks yet.

Answer 2

The public Google pagerank has in the past been updated from 1 to 5 times a year. In 2012 there were four updates (Feb. 7, May 2, Aug. 2, Nov. 7). There is no way of predicting when the next update will be.

The pagerank displayed by the Google toolbar is not the "real" pagerank - it is only an approximation. The "real" pagerank (used by Google to decide where to list your site on the search result page) is not disclosed to the public.

Even pages with no page rank show up in search results. You can speed up the time Google will discover new pages by using Google Webmasters tools - in particular by submitting an XML sitemap.

New pages seem to get some "Google love" when they're published (i.e. they are ranked higher than can be expected). This is presumably a countermeasure to the "early voter problem" that may bias SERP rankings. If this early "Google love" does not results in popularity (e.g. inbound links, click-throughs), the page will tank as it ages.