How long does it take to show up on Google?

Two different questions

People ask one question here but mean two, and the answers are weeks apart.

Being in Google at all is indexing. Google has found your page and will show it if someone searches for something specific enough, usually your business name. For a new site this normally happens within a few days, and almost always within a week or two.

Being found by someone who does not know you is ranking. That is the one that brings work, and it is measured in months.

Roughly what to expect

These are the patterns we see. They are not promises, and anyone who gives you a date is guessing.

When	What usually happens
Week one	Indexed. You can find yourself by name
Month one	Long, specific phrases start bringing a trickle
Months two to three	Movement on real terms. Rarely the top
Months three to six	The terms that matter begin to settle
Beyond six months	Competitive terms, and holding what you gained

Why it takes that long

Google is not deciding whether your page is good. It is deciding whether it is a safe recommendation, and that judgement is partly about consistency over time.

A site that has answered a question well for four months is a better bet than one that appeared last Tuesday, even if the newer page is better written. There is no way to shortcut that, because time passing is the actual signal.

What makes it faster, and what makes it slower

Faster: an established domain, a business already known offline, a subject nobody else covers properly, and pages that load quickly and read cleanly.

Slower: a brand new domain, a crowded field, directories that already own the obvious phrases, and a site that is slow or hard for a machine to read.

The three month rule we work to

The first three months of the monthly work go almost entirely on foundations: the technical fixes, the structure and the writing. Very little visible movement happens in that window, and we say so before anyone signs anything, because it is the point where people expect a graph to turn upwards.

If you need enquiries this month, search is the wrong tool and we will tell you that. It compounds, which is worth a great deal, but only to someone who can wait for it.

What we will not tell you

We do not promise positions, traffic numbers or a number of enquiries. Nobody can, and the ones who do are describing luck they have not had yet.