How to submit your website to Google, Bing, and Yahoo!

It was once possible to submit a site to Google without having to identify yourself with a Google account. This process was quick and easy to complete. All you had to do was visit the Google webmaster page and choose the “Submit URL” tool. However, Google had to stop this feature because some submitters misused submit URLs to artificially improve their search engine ranking. The following video describes how the tool worked.

Create a Google account

To submit your URL to Google, you first have to log on to Google’s start page and create an account; signing up for one is completely free of charge. Click the ‘sign in’ button and then select ‘create account’. Google will then take you through the registration process. Skip this step if you’re already registered with Google.

Start Google Search Console

The Google Search Console is available at the following address:

https://search.google.com/search-console

You will also need to log in there before proceeding to the dashboard.

Submit site to Google

On the new version of Google Search Console you register your website in the left sidebar. To do this, click on the “add property” button. A cursor appears at the same position. As already explained above, enter the entire URL of your domain or webpage there. Then click on the “+ add property” button to submit your indexing request.

Integrate apps

If you have an Android app whose ranking you would like to improve, it is also worth submitting it to Google via the Search Console. First, publish the app to Google Play Store. Then visit the Search Console website and sign in with your Google Play account. You need an account that has administrative rights to the app.

You will find a button to the left of the Search Console input field. By default, this is labelled “website.”. Click the button and select the second option from the drop-down menu: Android app. Enter the root URI of your app in the input field:

com.[package name].app (for example: com.testApp.app)

The tool now checks whether you are authorised to manage the app. If so, it automatically confirms the “property” in the search console. You should receive a confirmation e-mail after two days at the latest.

Automatically register site

Websites are changing. Google crawls your domain regularly once you have registered, but a sitemap systematically informs the crawling system about new web pages. It also provides metadata that helps crawlers react more quickly to changes anyd errors.

First, submit your website and URL to Google as described. Then there are three ways you can request Google to index your sitemap:

1. Open your robots-txt file. Enter the following statement anywhere: Sitemap: [myDomain.com]/my_sitemap.xml
2. The next time it crawls, Google will find your sitemap at this address
3. If your sitemap can be accessed via the iInternet, use the GET command in the ping tool: www.google.com/ping?sitemap=[complete URL of the sitemap]
4. Submit your sitemap via the Search Console. To do this, create a “Sitemaps report” for your property.

During registration, Google informs applicants that the submitted URL will not automatically be accepted into the search index. Addresses transferred to Google are crawled by search bots within a matter of a few days and checked for their relevance. Once it’s determined that your website has been set up according to Google’s guidelines for webmasters, then nothing should stand in the way of completing a successful registration. You can check whether your URL is listed with Google by executing a simple site search. Just enter the following search into Google’s search bar:

site:www.yourdomain.com

The search operator site, instructs Google to display all the indexed URLs with the respective domain in the search engine results pages. Should the site search fail to yield the desired result despite the indexing submission, then the next step is to rule out a failed indexing attempt due to technical reasons. The file robots.txt, the HTML meta tag "nofollow", and the canonical tag are all common culprits in such cases.  

Additional information on registering your website with Google and potential problems you may run into when indexing are covered in this video: