Submitting a website to search engines is how you let them know about its existence.
With millions of websites available online, it is challenging for search engines to discover and index your website quickly. If they don’t know your website exists, your chances of ranking are uncertain or simply not possible.
To expedite the process and make your website visible immediately, you need to submit it to search engines.
The best part is that submitting your website to search engines is free, easy, and effective. Check out our detailed article on how to do this on popular search engines like Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo.
But first, let’s address some common questions that might be on your mind.
Do you need to submit a website to search engines in 2024?
In short, not really. Search engines are well-designed and capable of finding new websites on the internet on their own, thanks to their bots or crawlers.
These crawlers are small computer programs that tirelessly scan and search for new do-follow links on known websites. If they find a link that directs to valuable and helpful content, that page gets indexed.
No doubt, search engines will probably find your website on their own, but manually submitting a website to search engines has its benefits, such as:
- Faster indexing: Why you should wait for search engine crawlers to index your website, rather you can do it by yourself and it is much faster. After all, you don’t want to take any chances in SEO.
- Provides more information about your website: It helps search engines know more about your website, especially content updates and changes.
- Helps in understanding your site structure: It helps search engines to better understand your website structure and interlinks and also helps your content rank better for multiple keywords.
- Helps and suggests website improvements: Submitting a website to search engines like Google and Bing provides you with various tools that help to improve your website experience and SEO.
How to submit a website to search engines? (Google, Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckgo)
You might be aware that search engine giants Google and Bing discontinued their URL submission tool back in 2018 and replaced it with sitemap submission instead.
Sitemap is a file located in your web server that contains all the information about your website pages and links associated with it.
However, for other search engines like Yahoo and DuckDuckGo, there is no need to submit a URL or sitemap.
Some prerequisite steps to follow before submitting a website to a search engine:
Before proceeding, there are certain things you need to make sure are set up:
- You have backend access to your site (not compulsory).
- You have generated a sitemap for your website.
- Your website has a robots.txt file.
- You have implemented and set up Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
For Sitemap, you can easily find it at one of the URLs:
- yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml
- yourdomain.com/sitemap_index.xml
However, if you are unable to find sitemap at these URLs, check out your robots.txt file which is generally located at yourdomain.com/robots.txt.
Note: Most websites generally like to list their site map in robots.txt.
If you are unable to find it in a robots.txt file, it means you do not have it at all and need to generate a new one before proceeding further.
To generate a sitemap, you can utilize popular WordPress SEO plugins such as Yoast SEO and Rank Math, which automatically do it for you.
Read: 🚩 Rankmath vs Yoast SEO: Which is the Best WordPress SEO plugin?
Set up your Google Search Console
Apart from the sitemap, you have another checklist to ensure that Google Search Console is properly set up.
You might have already set up your Google Search Console for those who don’t, check out the steps given below:
How to Verify Domain Ownership Using DNS Records
- Copy the DNS TXT Record: Obtain the DNS TXT record provided for verification.
- Add the DNS TXT Record to Your Domain Name Provider
- Log in to your domain name provider’s account.
- Navigate to the DNS settings section.
- Add the provided DNS TXT record to the DNS configuration.
- Now Wait for the DNS changes to propagate and Verify your domain ownership using the provided verification tool.
Alternative Verification Methods
- If you don’t want to or can’t verify your domain using DNS records, alternative methods are available to verify your account.
Set up Bing Webmaster tools
Setting up Bing Webmaster Tools is quite easy. Things become much easier if you set up the Google Search Console. All you need to do is click on the import button after successfully signing up with Bing Webmaster Tools.
So, now that you have completed all the prerequisite setups, it is time to learn how to submit a website to search engines.
Let’s begin with Google.
How do I submit a site to Google Search?
It is a pretty simple and easy method to submit a site to Google, all you have to do is,
1. Locate your XML sitemap, generally found at the URL: yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml, and copy the URL.
2. Log in to Google Search Console, click on “Sitemap” in the left menu, paste the sitemap URL, and click on the submit button.
- Note: If you have more than one sitemap, repeat the above steps until all of them are listed in the submitted section.
3. To submit a single page URL to Google Search Console, copy the entire page URL and submit it to the Google Search Engine’s URL Inspection tool.
- If the URL cannot be indexed, the console will display a message stating “URL is not on Google.” Click on “Request Indexing” to ask Google to crawl the page and index it.
- If everything goes well on the first attempt and the page is indexed, you will see a confirmation message stating “URL is on Google.”
How do I submit my website in Bing?
Go to the Bing Webmaster tool, just like the Google search console, and look for the sitemap located at the left menu > click to open it > paste the sitemap URL and click on the “Submit Sitemap” button.
How do I submit my website to Yahoo?
Bing shares its indexing technology with Yahoo, which means that when you submit your website’s sitemap to Bing, it is automatically submitted to Yahoo as well.
It is one of the easiest methods, and you don’t need to do anything specifically for Yahoo.
How do I submit my Website to DuckDuckGo?
Unlike other search engines, DuckDuckGo doesn’t provide a facility to submit websites. For indexing, they rely on multiple trusted sources(over 400 resources), partner with other search engines, and use their proprietary crawler, DuckDuckBot.
So, this means you can’t do anything directly to submit your site. Instead, leverage your website link on trusted and popular websites and ensure it is indexed on other popular search engines.
How do I check if my website is indexed?
Well, it is not a sure shot that if you submit your website to search engines, it will be indexed automatically. You need to check it over time to see if the website is indexed properly or not.
How do I know if my website is indexed by Google?
One of the easiest methods to check if your website is indexed by Google is simply to search your website on Google. If the result shows your website in the SERPs it means Google has crawled and indexed our site.
Another method you can try is to use the search operator command “site” in Google. For this, just type
site:www.yourdomain.com
However, this particular method is not reliable and doesn’t yield very accurate results. The best way to check indexing by Google is to use their submission tools i.e. Google Search Console.
These tools provide much more accurate results and also let you know of any errors so you can rectify them for proper indexing.
1. Open up Google Search Console and head to the “Coverage” report.
2. Once you’re in the Coverage report, click on the “Valid” tab to see which pages are indexed.
3. Click on any of the lists under “Details” to see the URLs that Google has indexed.
4. If you want to check the status of a particular page, use the URL Inspection Tool to see if that page is indexed.
Common Indexing Issues and What to Do About Them
To gain better insight, get familiar with some common indexing issues and solutions that you might see in the Google Search Console’s Coverage report after pasting the website URL or page URL into the URL Inspection Tool. Check out the list given below:
1. Excluded by ‘noindex’ Tag
What It Means: Google isn’t indexing the page because there’s a “noindex” tag telling it not to.
What to Do: If you want the page to be indexed, just remove the “noindex” tag from the page.
2. Blocked by robots.txt
What It Means: Googlebot is unable to crawl the page because it’s blocked in the robots.txt file.
What to Do: If you want the page to be indexed, you need to remove the block from the robots.txt file.
3. Page with Redirect
What It Means: Google is unable to index pages that are redirected somewhere else.
What to Do: If the page shouldn’t be redirected, fix the redirect to make sure the right page gets indexed.
4. Duplicate Without User-Selected Canonical
What It Means: Google thinks this page is a duplicate of another one and chose the main version to index.
What to Do: This is usually fine, but if you think this page should be indexed instead, check it out and adjust the canonical tag if needed.
How do I know if my website is Indexed by Bing?
To get an exact indexing report, it is highly recommended you go for the Bing Webmaster tool and follow the steps given below:
1. Log in to Bing Webmaster Tools.
Enter your Bing account details to access the tools.
2. Open Site Explorer.
This is where you can explore your website’s indexing status.
3. Select “Indexed URLs” from the Menu.
Click on the drop-down menu in the upper left and select “Indexed URLs” to view your site’s indexed pages.
Some Additional Tips and Notes on submitting a website to search engine
Getting your website submitted or indexed is not enough—you need to make it into the top 10 rankings in the SERPs. While search engines index thousands of websites and pages daily and show hundreds or thousands of results, studies by popular SEO blog Backlinko show that no one is interested in going beyond the first page of search results.
That’s why your priority shouldn’t just be getting your page or website indexed, but also optimizing it to reach the top ranks of the SERPs.
Additionally, submitting your website to search engines is completely free; you do not have to pay any submission service or submission fee. If anyone asks you for a fee to submit your website to search engines, it’s a scam. If you fall for it, you might get flooded with spammy emails trying to sell you their SEO services. So, be careful and stay away from such service providers.
Search engines encourage you to do it yourself, and they offer plenty of free resources online to help you.
Read: 🚩 How To Submit WordPress Site To Google News?
Conclusion
If you don’t wish to manually submit your website to search engines like Google or Bing, it will not make a difference; their bots will eventually find your website and crawl it.
But it is still highly recommended that you manually submit your website, as it helps in faster indexing of your website or page and also provides some additional information to search engines.
Additionally, if there are any issues with your website or indexing, you can easily check and fix them. These are all benefits from an SEO point of view, and you should never miss even the slightest opportunity for better optimization for search engines.
If we have missed anything or would like to share your thoughts, please do let us know in the comment section below:
Rahul Kumar is a web enthusiast, and content strategist specializing in WordPress & web hosting. With years of experience and a commitment to staying up-to-date with industry trends, he creates effective online strategies that drive traffic, boosts engagement, and increase conversions. Rahul’s attention to detail and ability to craft compelling content makes him a valuable asset to any brand looking to improve its online presence.
