Google’s John Mueller in a video hangout last Friday at the 1:04 mark into the video addressed the common question of why does a page or URL show up in Google’s index for a couple days or so and then drop out, especially new URLs that were not indexed yet by Google.

John Mueller explains that there are essentially two ways to get indexed, one is the normal indexing method where when pages get indexed they are more likely to stay in the index for longer periods of time. The second he called “fast track” indexing where Google quickly puts it into the index, maybe because you used the submit to index feature in the fetch as Google in Google Search Console. Those pages may not stay in the index for long periods of time, not at least until the normal indexing method picks up the page.

Fast track indexing can lead to pages getting indexed faster but may not result in the page staying in the index.
Normal indexing will likely result in the page being found in the Google index for longer periods of time.

This is a common behavior seen for years and years, where new sites and pages would be indexed quickly and then drop out and come back into the index at a later date.

Here is the video embed at the start time:

Here is the transcript:

Question:

Answer:

Forum discussion at YouTube Live.