Posting new URLs to Reddit got them indexed in six minutes, Bobbink says

Jan-Willem Bobbink shared a small indexing test on LinkedIn on 14 October. He published 32 new URLs and shared each one on Reddit or X in a thread where it fit. The average time from publish to indexed was about six minutes.

When he inspected one URL in Search Console, Google listed the Reddit thread as the referring page. His sitemap was still showing a processing error at that point.

The reason is a pair of data deals. Bobbink cites Google's paid access to Reddit's Data API, signed in 2024, which Google itself called real-time structured access to fresh content. He also points to the 2015 Twitter firehose deal that let Google index tweets as they were posted. He is not sure what the X setup looks like now, but tweets still get indexed.

What the test does and does not prove

The sample is 32 URLs from one practitioner. Treat the six-minute figure as a signal from one site, not a benchmark. If you want to know whether the same route works for you, publish a handful of pages, share them in fitting threads, and log the time to indexed in Search Console yourself.

Bobbink flags two limits. A fast crawl will not hold a thin page in the index. And a 2015 study he cites found Google indexed only a small share of tweets, with a bias toward accounts with more followers. He also notes the Reddit deal is up for renewal and Reddit has floated limiting Google's access, so the shortcut may not last.

How to use it without getting banned

Bobbink is firm on this. Do not drop links. Moderators and Reddit's own filters remove link drops fast, and accounts that only post their own URLs get banned.

The route works when the page is genuinely useful and the subreddit is one where readers already ask about that topic. We think the useful read for practitioners is narrower than a new indexing hack. It is a reminder that Google's index is fed by sources outside your own crawl budget, and that where your URL first appears shapes how fast it is found.