"I clicked submit and nothing happened"#
Almost always the debounce, and almost always correct. CrawlReady refuses to announce a page that has not changed, because search engines throttle and eventually ignore hosts that do that — and the damage takes weeks to undo.
The Next eligible column in your page table says when the URL becomes available again. Hover it and it tells you why it is waiting:
| What it says | What happened |
|---|---|
| Queued, goes out on the next sweep | Nothing is wrong. Submissions go out every five minutes |
| Waiting out the resubmit interval | Sent recently; an unchanged page waits seven days |
| Something signalled this page N more times | Your sitemap, a deploy, or a CI call fired again. Repeat signals do not resubmit unchanged content |
| Backing off after N submissions | Sent repeatedly without being indexed. Each attempt now waits longer: 1 day, 3, 7, 30 |
| We have stopped resubmitting | Five attempts, still not indexed. More submissions will not help — see below |
Submit now on the row overrides the wait for a human who has a reason to. It is still floored at one hour and it does consume quota.
"Nothing is being submitted at all"#
The dashboard shows a banner when this is true, naming the reason. The common ones:
Your key file is unreachable. Nothing goes to Bing until we can read it. The banner quotes what your server actually returned; the two usual causes are a deploy that dropped the file and a single-page app serving its index page for unknown paths. Fixing it →
Google setup is unfinished. Usually the service account address has not been added as an Owner on the Search Console property — anything less than Owner cannot submit. Fixing it →
Indexing is off. The master toggle in Settings. Turning it off keeps the queue: switching back on resumes where the sweep left off rather than resubmitting everything, which is important — replaying a whole inventory is exactly what gets a host deprioritised.
Reading coverage states#
Coverage comes from Google only. Bing and the other engines accept submissions but expose no way to ask whether they indexed anything, so pages sent only there show as not checked rather than as a guess.
Indexed. In the index and eligible to appear. Nothing to do.
Crawled, not indexed. Google fetched the page and decided against indexing it. This is the one worth paying attention to: it is a judgement about the page, and no amount of resubmitting changes a judgement. Usual causes are thin content, near-duplication of another page on your site, or a page that adds nothing a dozen other pages do not already say.
Discovered, not indexed. Google knows the URL exists but has not fetched it. Usually about the site rather than the page — crawl budget, or overall quality signals. Common on large sites with many similar pages, and on new domains.
Excluded. Blocked by robots.txt, a noindex tag, or a canonical pointing somewhere else. Usually intentional. Check that it is.
Not checked. We have not inspected it, or it only goes to engines that do not report back.
A page five submissions deep#
At that point CrawlReady stops resubmitting and surfaces the page instead. This is not giving up — it is the honest answer. A page an engine has been told about five times and still declined has a content or crawlability problem, and a sixth submission is both wasted allowance and a worse outcome than being told the truth.
Diagnose on the row runs a full readiness scan against that URL. Work through what it finds in this order:
- Is it reachable and rendering? A page that needs JavaScript to produce its content may be arriving empty. This is the single most common cause and it is invisible in a browser.
- Is it blocked?
robots.txt,noindex, or a canonical pointing at a different page. - Is it distinct? If three pages say substantially the same thing, expect one of them to be indexed.
- Is it linked? A page nothing links to reads as unimportant no matter how often you announce it.
Quota#
Bing and the other IndexNow engines have no daily limit. If your dashboard shows submissions stopping, it is not quota.
Google allows 200 a day per Cloud project. When it is spent, submissions are deferred rather than failed and resume the next day. To raise the ceiling, connect another Cloud project — the allowance is per project, and connecting a second doubles it. How that works →
Your CrawlReady plan has a monthly submission allowance. Shown on the Indexing page. Exceeding it returns a clear error rather than silently dropping submissions.
Timing#
- Submissions go out within five minutes of a page being marked.
- Coverage is checked hourly, prioritising pages submitted at least a day ago that are not yet indexed.
- Key files are re-checked daily, and on demand from the setup wizard.
- Median time to index on the Indexing page is your real answer to "how long does this take" — it is measured on your own pages, not quoted from anyone's marketing.
Pushing a URL does not oblige an engine to index it. What it removes is the wait before the engine decides, which for a new page is often the difference between days and weeks.
Decisions#
- The debounce is not configurable below its floor. A customer cannot configure their way onto an engine's blocklist. Both intervals are clamped server-side regardless of what is requested.
- Stopping after five attempts is a feature. Continuing would spend allowance to no effect and would hide the real problem.
- Unknown coverage is shown as unknown. Bing exposes no read-back. Displaying a guess would be worse than displaying a gap.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did nothing happen when I clicked submit?
Almost always the debounce, and almost always correct — CrawlReady refuses to announce a page that hasn't changed, because search engines throttle and eventually ignore hosts that do that. The Next eligible column in your page table says when the URL becomes available again, and hovering it explains why it's waiting.
What does 'Crawled, not indexed' mean?
Google fetched the page and decided against indexing it. This is a judgement about the page — usually thin content, near-duplication of another page on your site, or a page that adds nothing a dozen other pages don't already say — and no amount of resubmitting changes a judgement.
What does 'Discovered, not indexed' mean?
Google knows the URL exists but hasn't fetched it yet. This is usually about the site rather than the page — crawl budget or overall quality signals — and it's common on large sites with many similar pages and on new domains.
Why did CrawlReady stop resubmitting my page?
After five submissions without the page getting indexed, CrawlReady stops and surfaces the page instead of continuing. A page an engine has been told about five times and still declined has a content or crawlability problem, and a sixth submission would be both wasted allowance and a worse outcome than being told the truth — the Diagnose action runs a readiness scan against the URL instead.
