Introduction
Reindexing is not a button. It is a scheduling side‑effect.
In large systems, pages are not reprocessed because something changed, but because the system encountered enough reasons to care again. Internal linking is one of the few levers that can alter encounter probability at scale — not magically, not instantly, but measurably.
Over the last decade, I have repeatedly seen the same pattern: teams submit URLs, update content, watch crawl logs — and nothing moves. Then a structural change happens inside the internal graph, and suddenly processing catches up. The difference is not intent. It is routing.
Reindexing is driven by encounter frequency, not freshness
Search systems do not track “freshness” the way people imagine. They track revisits, confirmations, and consolidation cost.
John Mueller has stated multiple times that crawling more does not automatically mean faster indexing, and that internal links help search engines understand which pages matter more. That statement is often quoted vaguely, but the operational meaning is specific: links influence how often and from where a URL is rediscovered.
In practice, when a page is linked from frequently crawled nodes, its reprocessing window tightens. When it is only reachable through deep or rarely visited paths, changes linger.
This is why internal linking behaves less like a “signal” and more like traffic routing in a distributed system.
What actually changes when you add or move internal links
When internal links are added or repositioned, three measurable things tend to shift:
- Encounter frequency — how often the crawler meets the URL through independent paths.
- Context consolidation — how quickly the system confirms that this version is authoritative.
- Processing priority — how soon downstream systems revisit the page after fetch.
None of these are guaranteed. They are probabilistic. But at scale, probabilities compound.
In multiple large content sites (100k+ URLs), structural internal link changes have reduced average update reflection time from 3–6 weeks to under 10 days. Not everywhere. Not uniformly. But often enough to be reproducible.
Why depth alone does not explain reindex behaviour
Depth is frequently blamed because it is easy to measure. It is also incomplete.
A deeply nested URL that is linked from a strong, frequently crawled hub will often update faster than a shallow URL that sits behind weak navigation. This is why discussions about URL depth vs crawl frequency matter more than raw hierarchy.
Depth influences probability. Routing determines outcome.
That distinction is central to URL Depth vs Crawl Frequency, and it is why flattening URLs without rethinking traversal rarely fixes latency.
Internal linking vs XML sitemaps: why one works and the other stalls
XML sitemaps introduce URLs. Internal links reinforce them.
Gary Illyes has publicly described sitemaps as a discovery aid, not a ranking or prioritization mechanism. In operational terms, sitemaps help the crawler know a URL exists. They do not help the system care.
This explains a common failure mode documented in Why XML Sitemaps Don’t Fix Structural Problems: pages are known, crawled occasionally, and still processed slowly.
Internal links, especially from high‑confidence nodes, create repeated encounters. Sitemaps do not.
The reindex window in practice
Observed timelines from production sites tend to cluster roughly like this:
| Structural condition | Typical update reflection |
|---|---|
| Strong internal reinforcement | 3–10 days |
| Moderate linking, stable canonicals | 10–30 days |
| Weak graph position | 30–90 days |
| Soft orphan behaviour | Indefinite or inconsistent |
These ranges are empirical, not guaranteed. They also drift over time as systems evolve.
Why taxonomy still matters here
Internal linking cannot compensate for structural ambiguity.
If a site produces multiple near‑equivalent URLs across categories, tags, and filters, the system must first resolve which version is canonical before it can reprocess meaningfully. Internal links help only after that cost is paid.
This is where hierarchical taxonomy intersects with reindexing. Clean intent boundaries reduce consolidation cost. Lower cost accelerates confirmation. Confirmation accelerates refresh.
That chain breaks quickly when taxonomy is decorative rather than functional.
When internal linking fails to trigger reindexing
There are cases where link changes do nothing. Almost always, the reasons are structural:
– links are added from pages that are themselves rarely crawled, – links sit behind pagination or faceted paths, – the target page competes with similar URLs, – or the page behaves like a soft orphan.
The last case overlaps heavily with the failure modes described in Soft Orphans and Internal Link Decay. The page exists. The system simply stopped prioritizing it.
Conclusion
Internal linking does not force reindexing. It alters probability.
When links improve encounter frequency, reduce ambiguity, and reconnect a page to the active traversal graph, reprocessing often follows. When they do not, nothing happens — and that silence is diagnostic.
If internal linking changes have no effect, the system is not ignoring you. It is telling you that priority has already decayed elsewhere.