Should you have to submit your pages on Google Search Consule to get google to crawl them or should that come naturally ?
Hey @ChrisColgan!
Great question - generally speaking, you don’t need to submit pages to Google to crawl. Especially if your page is linked internally and on your sitemap. The request tool is more of a nudge vs. a requirement. You’re also capped at how many requests you can do daily.
Submitting an ask to manually crawl can sometimes lead to Google indexing the page sooner. But, I usually only use that feature when I’m updating old pages with new content, just to ensure Google is aware I want it updated.
Otherwise, I just let the normal crawl cycle handle it.
+1 - and the more links (authority) you develop on the site, the more crawler visits / deeper crawls etc.
The one exception I would say is deep linked pages that might take a few clicks to get to (maybe a listing that is a click to a city, then another click to a neighborhood then another click to page 2 of the listings snippet then a click to the listing. If it was YOUR listing, I might submit it (but not others) - keep in mind though, with such a deep click path and likely only 1 internal link (and it being mostly if not totally duplicate content according to Google) there is still no guarantee they will index the listing page in this scenario. (again you have a better chance if you have higher authority)