Google announced Wednesday morning that it is killing off the public method of submitting URLs to its search index. The “addurl” page, which is still listed in this help document, now redirects to the Google Search Console login page.

Google Webmasters said,”We’ve had to drop the public submission feature.” The company did not say why it was necessary to drop it. Maybe it has to do with spam issues or abuse. Google added, “… but we continue to welcome your submissions using the usual tool in Search Console and through sitemaps directly.”

The last time Google updated the submit content tool was back in 2012, when it moved it to the classic Google Webmaster Tools URL.

Google says webmasters should submit content only through Search Console’s Fetch as Google tool or via sitemaps.

We've had to drop the public submission feature, but we continue to welcome your submissions using the usual tool in Search Console and through sitemaps directly. — Google Webmasters (@googlewmc) July 25, 2018

Here is a screen shot of the tool working when you are logged in:

Here it is when you try the web search method if you are logged in:

Postscript: A few hours after publishing this story, the public submit URL form has been taken down. Here is what it looks like now: