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Google announced on Twitter that they are or have dropped "the public submission feature" to submit URLs to Google. Google said instead, you can continue to use the Google Search Console's Fetch & Submit for individual pages or use XML Sitemaps to feed pages to Google that way.
I just tested the public submit tool and it still seems to work, at least at the time I am writing this. Maybe it will be going away? Here is a screen shot:
Plus the ability to go to Google and search for [submit URL], a feature that launched only a year ago also seems to work:
Here is the announcement:
Of course, it doesn't surprise me that Google wants to kill off the public submit URL tool. I guess it will go away soon.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
Update: It now looks like you need to be logged in to submit a URL either of these ways.
Update 2: The public URL tool is now 100% offline:
