The figures Google showed
Search Central Live Deep Dive is a three-day event Google's Search Relations team ran in Barcelona this year, with one day each for crawling, indexing and serving. On the last day, 2 October, Illyes closed with a session on how long things take. John Campbell of the agency ROAST, who wrote the fullest account, called it “brand new information” and said each process had a fastest, a typical and a slowest time, based on Google's internal analysis. His write-up lists the typical and slowest times. Illyes warned that the processes are linked: a page cannot be indexed before it is crawled, so delays add up.
Crawling. Discovering a new URL: about 20 hours typically, weeks to never at the slowest. Refreshing a known URL: about 30 days, weeks to never. Processing a sitemap: about 24 hours, up to 14 days or never for quality reasons. Picking up a robots.txt change: about 24 hours, 25 at the slowest. Updating crawl capacity: four hours to one or two weeks, one to three weeks when recovering. Updating crawl demand: about 20 hours, weeks to months. Campbell adds that capacity can drop in seconds when Google backs off a struggling server.
Indexing. Rendering: seconds to render but hours in the queue, days to weeks at the slowest. Meta annotations: 45 to 90 minutes, one to four days. Link annotations: minutes to one to three weeks, months. Indexing end to end: about an hour and a half, months or never for quality reasons. Removal from the index: one to three weeks, months. A change of canonical: one to three weeks, months where signals conflict. A site move: one to three months, six months to more than a year. Structured data updates: hours to one or two weeks, weeks or never for quality reasons. Images and videos: hours to days, weeks to months.
Serving. An owner's removal request in Search Console: about two hours, 24 hours at most. A snippet update and a title update: one to two days each, several weeks to months. An image beside a text result: one to two weeks, several weeks to months. Removal of a manual action: one to two weeks, four to six weeks or much longer for dormant sites. Recovery after a core update: three to six months, six months to a year. Changes from a spam update: one to two weeks where the system runs continuously, months where it is refreshed in batches. Campbell also records that core updates take two to four weeks to roll out and spam updates one to two days.
Typical time per process, from Google's slides as reported; bar length is the upper end of the typical range, in days
Source: secondary reports of Gary Illyes's slides at Google Search Central Live, Barcelona, 2 October 2026: Search Engine Roundtable, 5 October 2026, and ROAST, 2 October 2026 (see Sources). Not a Google publication.
Typical cases only; slowest cases run from 24 hours to never. Steps add up: a correction to a known page usually waits for the recrawl before the title or snippet changes.
What the figures mean when coverage about you is wrong
The figures are written for site owners, but they answer a question a company asks more often: how long until Google shows the corrected version of something. The answer depends on whose page it is and what kind of change it is.
A page you control. If a company corrects its own page, Google first has to recrawl it. For a known URL the typical refresh is about 30 days, so a correction can sit unseen for weeks unless the owner asks Google to recrawl it. Once Google has the new version, the title and snippet typically follow within one to two days. Google's own documentation is vaguer: its page on asking for a recrawl says crawling “can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks”. How the steps from discovery to indexing fit together is set out in how long Google takes to index a new page.
A page someone else controls. Google's documentation says a site owner “can't request indexing for URLs that you don't manage”. When a publisher corrects an article about a company, the company waits on Google's normal recrawl of the publisher's page, which for a known URL is typically about 30 days, unless the publisher asks for a recrawl itself. Asking the publisher to request it is often quicker than waiting.
Something that has to come down. Two figures are easily confused. Removing a URL through Search Console, which the owner of the site can do, typically takes effect in about two hours. But Google's help page says such a request “lasts only about six months”, that it hides the page from results without stopping Google crawling it, and that the tool alone will not remove a URL permanently. Removing a page from the index itself typically takes one to three weeks, and months at the slowest. A company that does not control the page cannot use the tool at all; Google points it instead to a separate request to refresh outdated content.
Structured data. Corrected markup, such as an organisation's details, typically takes hours to two weeks to be picked up, and at the slowest weeks or never, which the slide ties to quality. A fix that Google does not consider worth processing may simply not appear.
How the figures compare with Google's documentation
Most of the figures make Google's published guidance more specific without contradicting it. Its documentation on core updates says some improvements “can take effect in a few days” but that it “could take several months” for its systems to confirm a site has improved, and that a site still waiting after a few months may need “the next core update”. That is the three-to-six-month typical case and the six-months-to-a-year slowest case in the slide. Its help page on manual actions says most reviews “can take several days or weeks”, consistent with one to two weeks for a manual action to come off.
The spam update row is worth reading alongside our count in how long a Google spam update takes. Campbell records Illyes as saying spam updates roll out in one to two days. Google's own status dashboard shows that many recent spam updates took longer than that, and eight of the 17 given a stated window ran past it. The slide's figure is a typical case, not a description of every update.
The one figure without a published equivalent is the 30-day typical refresh for a known URL. Google has not said this in its documentation, and it is the number that most affects how quickly a correction to an existing page reaches search results.
What the figures are not
They are not published data. Google has not put the slides on its Search Central site. The figures here come from attendees' accounts, mainly ROAST's, which Search Engine Roundtable and Search Engine Journal both used. Search Engine Journal noted that the write-ups leave out the fastest times Illyes showed.
They have no stated basis. Nothing says what share of pages counts as typical, over what period, for which kinds of site, or how the slowest cases were chosen. Illyes's own description, an exercise to see whether the audience could relate to numbers pulled internally, suggests reference points rather than service levels.
They do not add up neatly. Because one process waits for another, the time for a correction to show is the sum of several rows, not any single one.
Methodology and limitations
This report collects figures Google presented but has not published. The table of typical and slowest times is taken from ROAST's “Google Search Central Live Deep Dive, Barcelona – Day 3 Recap” by John Campbell, published 2 October 2026, which we read in full. We cross-checked every figure against Search Engine Roundtable's report of 5 October, which reproduces the same table, and Search Engine Journal's report of 4 October, and found no disagreement. ROAST's site refused direct requests, so we read it through a text-rendering proxy. We have not seen the slides ourselves, and everything about them is secondhand. Illyes's description of the slides is quoted from Search Engine Roundtable. Google's documented timings are quoted from Search Central's “Ask Google to recrawl your URLs” and “Google Search's core updates and your website”, both last updated 10 December 2025, and from Search Console Help's “Removals and SafeSearch reports tool” and “Manual actions report”, all read on 5 October 2026. The count of 23 processes is ours, from the published table. The guidance on corrections is our reading of how Google's figures apply to a company; it has not been tested.
Conclusion
Google's figures put rough numbers on something companies usually have to guess. A correction to a page reaches Google's results in one to two days once Google has recrawled the page, but recrawling a known page typically takes about a month unless someone asks, and only the page's owner can ask. A temporary removal works in hours but lasts about six months; taking a page out of the index takes weeks. Recovery from a core update is measured in months. The figures are typical cases presented without a method, read here from attendees' notes, and Google has not published them. The most useful thing they show is where the waiting happens: usually before Google has seen the change, not after.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does Google take to update a title or snippet?
Typically one to two days, according to figures Gary Illyes showed on 2 October 2026, and several weeks to months at the slowest. The clock starts once Google has recrawled the page.
How often does Google recrawl a page it already knows?
Typically about every 30 days, according to the same figures, and in the slowest cases weeks or never. A site owner can ask Google to recrawl its own pages sooner.
Can I ask Google to recrawl an article about my company on someone else's site?
No. Google's documentation says you cannot request indexing for URLs you do not manage. The publisher can request it, which is usually faster than waiting for Google's normal recrawl.
How quickly does a Search Console removal work?
Typically in about two hours, and within 24. But Google says such a removal lasts only about six months and is not permanent on its own. Removing a page from the index typically takes one to three weeks.
How long does it take to recover from a core update?
Typically three to six months, according to the figures shown in Barcelona, and six months to a year in the slowest cases, when recovery waits for the next core update. Google's documentation says it could take several months.
Has Google published these figures?
No. They were shown on slides at Search Central Live Deep Dive Europe and reported by attendees. Google has not put them on its website or explained how they were calculated.
Sources
- live write-up John Campbell, ROAST, Google Search Central Live Deep Dive, Barcelona – Day 3 Recap, 2 October 2026. Full table of typical and slowest times. Secondhand account of Google's slides. Read 5 October 2026 through a text-rendering proxy.
- trade press Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Roundtable, Google Search Data On Crawling, Indexing & Serving Timelines, 5 October 2026. Same table; Illyes's comment on the slides. Read 5 October 2026.
- trade press Matt G. Southern, Search Engine Journal, Google Shows How Long Crawling, Indexing & Recovery Can Take, 4 October 2026. Read 5 October 2026.
- documentation Google Search Central, Ask Google to recrawl your URLs, last updated 10 December 2025. “A few days to a few weeks”; no requests for URLs you do not manage. Read 5 October 2026.
- documentation Google Search Central, Google Search's core updates and your website, last updated 10 December 2025. Read 5 October 2026.
- platform documentation Search Console Help, Removals and SafeSearch reports tool. Temporary removal lasts about six months; not permanent on its own; not for pages you do not control. Read 5 October 2026.
- platform documentation Search Console Help, Manual actions report. Reconsideration reviews take several days or weeks. Read 5 October 2026.