What Happens When You First Submit Your Website to Google?

Immediately after Google Search Console verification and sitemap.xml submission, Googlebot receives a signal about your site's existence. The robots.txt file is fetched first - it tells Google which pages can and cannot be crawled.

At this stage you won't see anything in search results yet. That is completely normal - Google collects information before publishing it.

Googlebot starts reading your page HTML structure - headings, links, image alt texts, canonical tags. Load speed is critical here: pages taking more than 3 seconds to load get crawled less frequently.

Google also checks that your site responds correctly - a 200 status code, not a 404 or 301 redirect to another page.

After the first crawl, the URL is placed in the indexing queue. This means Google has noticed your page but hasn't yet decided on indexation.

In GSC you'll see the status 'Discovered - currently not indexed' or 'Crawled - currently not indexed'. That is not an error - it's normal waiting.

80% of Latvian websites don't even submit a sitemap.xml (our Web Audit data) - they skip this stage and wait significantly longer.

In the best case, after 2–4 weeks your homepage and key sub-pages start appearing in search results. Initial positions will be 60–100. These aren't random - Google starts measuring how users respond to your content.

Branded search queries (your company name) usually appear first and with higher positions.

Now Google starts comparing your site against other results. Backlinks (external links to your site), user behaviour, and Core Web Vitals scores become decisive.

Latvian reality: only 9% of Latvian websites pass Google Core Web Vitals (our Web Audit data). This means most competitors automatically lose the ranking bonus at this stage.

If your site is fast and mobile-optimised - it gains a significant advantage here.

This stage often causes panic - yesterday you were 25th, today 70th, tomorrow back to 30th. This is normal and even expected. SEO specialists call it the 'Google Dance'.

The reason: Google is actively testing which position generates the best user response for your site. It's A/B testing at scale.

A mistake many make: they start changing content or structure at this stage. That doesn't stop the dance - it just restarts it.

After 6 months, most sites have found their stable place in search results. Now strategic content and regular backlinks can help improve those positions.

This is also the best time to review which keywords aren't delivering expected results and whether the content strategy needs adjustment.

Sites that continue publishing quality content at least once a month at this stage improve positions by an average of 15–25% over the next 6 months.