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How to Submit Your Website or a URL to Search Engines

How to Submit Your Website or a URL to Search Engines

Tan Siew Ann

Aug 29, 20247 min read
Contributor: Simon Fogg
Submit to Search Engines
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Submitting your website to a search engine helps you get more traffic from search. It gets the search engine to crawl your pages and decide whether (and how) to index them.

The best part? Submitting your site to search engines is free. You don’t need to use a paid service.

This article will walk you through the step-by-step process of submitting your site—or specific page URLs—to the Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, and Yandex search engines.

And how to use a tool like Site Audit to troubleshoot any indexing issues that occur after you’ve submitted your site.

Do You Need to Submit Your Website to Search Engines?

It’s almost certain that search engines will eventually find your site. But adding your site to search engines has these benefits:

  • Peace of mind: You’ve alerted search engines of your site’s existence, so you won’t have to wait and wonder
  • Faster crawling: When you submit your site to a search engine, it may add it to its priority queue and crawl it sooner
  • Higher rankings for relevant keywords: Search engines may be able to make more informed ranking decisions when you share your site structure instead of leaving them to figure it out

How to Submit Your Website to Google

Submitting a site to Google involves two main steps:

1. Find Your XML Sitemap URL

An XML sitemap is a file that lists the pages on your site.

For example, here’s part of the XML sitemap for Semrush’s blog:

xml sitemap for Semrush's blog showing a full list of URLs in plain text so crawlers can easily access them

When you provide search engines with your XML sitemap’s URL, they can visit the sitemap to discover—and then crawl—your site’s pages.

A website’s XML sitemap URL is usually this:

yoursite.com/sitemap.xml

Or this:

yoursite.com/sitemap_index.xml

Try entering these URLs into your browser to view your site’s XML sitemap.

If this doesn’t work, your site’s robots.txt file might show the correct sitemap URL to use.

Access your site’s robots.txt file at this URL:

yoursite.com/robots.txt

And look for your sitemap URL in this file:

xml sitemap with the sitemap URL at the bottom of the file highlighted

Further reading: WordPress Sitemap: How to Create, Check, and Submit One

2. Add Your Sitemap to Google Search Console

Connect Google Search Console (GSC) to your website if you haven’t already done so. After that, open GSC and click “Sitemaps” in the left sidebar.

Type your sitemap URL into the “Add a new sitemap” setting. Then, click “Submit.”

"Sitemaps" on Google Search Console with "Add a new sitemap" highlighted, a sitemap URL entered, and "Submit" clicked

If Google successfully processes your sitemap, the status will say “Success.”

"Submitted sitemaps" on Google Search Console with "Success" under the "Status" column highlighted

Further reading: How to Submit a Sitemap to Google (in 4 Simple Steps)

How to Submit Your Website to Bing

Add your site to Bing Webmaster Tools if you haven’t already. Then, open Bing Webmaster Tools and click “Sitemaps” in the left sidebar.

Click “Submit sitemap” at the top right.

A “Submit sitemap” pop-up will appear. Type your sitemap URL into the given field. And click “Submit.”

navigation to the "Submit sitemap" window on Bing Webmaster Tools with a sitemap URL entered and "Submit" clicked

If Bing successfully processes your sitemap, the status will say “Success.”

"Sitemap details" on Bing Webmaster Tools with "Success" under the "Status" column highlighted

Further reading: Bing Search Guide: History, AI Features, and SEO Tips

How to Submit Your Website to Yahoo

Bing powers Yahoo’s search engine. By submitting your website to Bing, you’ll also submit it to Yahoo.

How to Submit Your Website to DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo draws most of its search results from Bing. So, submitting your website to Bing helps it appear on DuckDuckGo, too.

How to Submit Your Website to Yandex

Open Yandex Webmaster and verify your site.

Once your verification is complete, click “Indexing” > “Sitemap files” on the left sidebar.

Type your sitemap URL into the “Add Sitemap file” field, and then click “Add.”

navigation to "Add Sitemap file" on Yandex with a sitemap URL entered and "Add" clicked

Yandex will then add your sitemap to its processing queue. Processing may take one to two weeks. If it successfully processes your sitemap, the status will say “ok.”

"Processing queue" on Yandex showing a list of submitted sitemap URLs along with the date submitted

How to Check if a Website Is Indexed

Submitting your website to a search engine doesn’t guarantee its appearance in the search results. That’s because there may be issues preventing the search engine from indexing your site’s pages.

Here are two methods for checking if a search engine has indexed your website:

Use this search query:

site:yoursite.com

The search engine will return results from your site if it has indexed it:

site search for "semrush.com" on Google with the indexed results highlighted

Otherwise, it will not show any results.

site search for "qwertyuiop.com" not showing any indexed results plus suggestions from Google to modify the search

This method also checks if a search engine has indexed a specific page.

site search on Google for a specific page from "semrush.com" with the indexed result highlighted

(Note: This method is fairly reliable as a starting point but not a perfect source of truth about webpage indexation.)

Use Google Search Console

Log in to GSC and click “Pages” in the left sidebar. Then, click “View data about indexed pages.”

"Page Indexing" report on Google Search Console with “View data about indexed pages" clicked

Scroll down to the “Examples” section to see a list of your site’s pages in the Google index. The report can show up to 1,000 URLs.

"Indexed pages" report on Google Search Console showing a list of page URLs in the Google index

Alternatively, here’s how to check if Google has indexed a specific page:

Type its URL into the “Inspect any URL in [your website]” search bar at the top of any GSC screen. Then, hit “Enter” or “return” on your keyboard.

You’ll see the message “Page is indexed” if Google has indexed the page.

the result for a URL search on Google Search Console showing that the page is indexed

Otherwise, you’ll see this message: “Page is not indexed: URL is unknown to Google.”

the result for a URL search on Google Search Console showing that the page is not indexed

How to Fix Indexing Issues

If your site has indexing issues, some (or all) of its pages won’t appear in the search results.

As a result, you’ll lose organic traffic.

Indexing issues include:

Use these tools to find and fix indexing issues:

Google Search Console

Go to GSC and click “Pages” in the left sidebar to load the “Page indexing” report.

Scroll down the report. Under the “Why pages aren’t indexed” section, you’ll see the number of pages Google isn’t indexing and the reasons.

“Why pages aren’t indexed” on Google Search Console with reasons like page with redirect, excluded by 'noindex' tag, not found, etc.

Click any indexing issue, and then scroll down to see why specific URLs aren’t getting indexed. You can view up to 1,000 examples.

a list of page URLs and the date they were last crawled for the "Page with redirect" indexing issue on Google Search Console

Scroll back to the top of the page. Then, click “Learn more” to get Google’s explanation of the indexing issue and suggestions for fixing it, if available.

"Learn More" below "Page with redirect" on "Page indexing" in Google Search Console clicked

Site Audit

Site Audit is a tool that checks for over 140 technical site issues—including indexing problems. To use it, log in to your Semrush account and click “SEO” > “Site Audit” in the left sidebar.

Click “+ Create project” to start a new site project.

Fill out your site’s domain and an optional project name. Then, click “Create project.”

"Create project" window on Site Audit with a domain entered and "Create project" clicked

On the “Configure basic settings” screen, set up the:

  • Crawl scope: Whether Site Audit should check your site’s subdomains
  • Limit of checked pages: The number of pages the tool should check each time
  • Crawl source: The place where the tool can find your site’s URLs. Leave the setting as “Website” if you’re unsure.

Click the steps numbered two to six on the left to configure optional settings. Like the URLs Site Audit should ignore.

Then, click “Start Site Audit.”

Site Audit Settings page to select crawl scope, source and limit of checked pages plus the "Start Site Audit" button clicked

Site Audit will scan your site for issues. When it’s done, click the “Issues” tab and choose “Indexability” from the “Category” drop-down.

"Issues" tab on Site Audit with the "Category" dropdown opened and "Indexability" clicked

The tool will display the indexing issues it detected on your site.

a list of indexability issues on Site Audit including hreflang conflicts, issues with title tags, meta descriptions and content, etc.

Click any issue to view the pages experiencing it:

a list of URLs with no title tags on Site Audit Issues with “Why and how to fix it” highlighted

Then, click “Why and how to fix it” to learn more about the issue and how to fix it.

Should You Use a Website Submission Service?

Submitting your site to search engines directly is fast, easy, and free. So a search engine submission service is likely unnecessary.

Some webpage submission services claim they can get your site onto little-known search engines and directories like Ask.com and Yippy.

But the vast majority of people use Google as their search engine. As of May 2024, its global market share was over 90.8%.

So, as long as your site is on Google, you’re in good shape.

Using a website submission service can also cause your SEO rankings to take a hit.

Why?

Because some of these services involve you paying other sites to link to yours—which results in unnatural linking behavior that Google doesn’t like. If Google catches you doing this, it may penalize your site.

Some links you buy may also be toxic backlinks that hurt your rankings. Semrush’s Backlink Audit can help you find and disavow these links. But it’s easier to avoid buying potentially harmful links in the first place.

So, stick with the search engines’ official website submission options.

Submitting your site to Google and other search engines isn’t complex and doesn’t take long. As long as you follow the steps, your URLs should be indexed in no time at all.

But if you encounter indexing issues after submitting your site, use Site Audit to troubleshoot and fix the problem.

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Siew Ann draws on her five years of SEO and email marketing experience to write creative, well-researched content for B2B SaaS businesses. Her articles have ranked on the first page of Google and as high as #1.
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