Search Engine Submission

Two of the most common questions relating to search engine submission I get asked are: “How do I get my website listed on search engines?” and “What search engines do I need to submit my website to”.

How do I get my website listed on search engines?

The fact is, if your website has been online for awhile, the main search engines Google, Bing and Yahoo have probably already found and indexed your website. Go to each of these now and enter your full website address into the search box. If you see your website popup in the results, your site is already listed with these search engines.

As well as being able to directly submit your website to these search engines, they also use something called bots/webcrawlers. These bots are computers that scan the web continually. They go from link to link around the web and index the relevant pages that they find which they believe would be useful to a searcher.

If you do not find your website on these search engines, they either haven’t found your site yet, or they have but not listed it for some reason.

Whether your site is showing in the search results or not, you should still follow the below process for Google and Bing. Not only will the processes below submit your website to Google, Bing and Yahoo, it will also give you tools to help you understand how search engines see your website, and how you can improve where your site appears within the search results pages (Serps).

Add your website to Google.

Adding your website to Google is Free and quite straight forward.

  1. Navigate to https://search.google.com
  2. Sign in or create a new Google Account.
  3. Enter your URL into the URL Prefix Box
  4. Follow the on screen instructions to verify that you own the domain.
  5. Once you have verified the domain click ‘Site Maps’.
  6. Enter your sitemap address. This is usually https://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml
  7. Google will then read your site map which is a list of pages on your website. Once it has done this you will usually begin to see your website on Google Results pages within a few days.

If Google is unable to read your sitemap, it is most likely because your site doesn’t have one. This is not a problem, contact your hosting provider or Google how to add a Sitemap to your website. The process will vary depending on what platform your website is built on.

Add your website to Bing

These days both Bing and Yahoo use the same database to find its results. This means you only have to submit your website once to tackle both search engines.

  1. Navigate to https://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster
  2. Sign in or create a new Microsoft Account.
  3. Enter your website url and follow the onscreen steps to verify you own the domain.
  4. Navigate to “Site Maps” and enter your sitemap URL as above.
  5. Once Bing has scanned your sitemap you should begin to appear on their results pages within a few days.
Search Engine Submission
James Harding Search Results

What search engines should I submit my website to?

I typically answer this with a question. “What search engines do you use?” This is usually met with Google, or sometimes Bing or Yahoo. Others that come up are usually powered by one of these three such as AOL search which is powered by Bing or Dogpile which pulls results from both Google and Bing.

So, what ever your website, ensure you submit it do Google and Bing/Yahoo. The other’s I recommend you submit to are listed below. Outside Google, Bing and Yahoo you are unlikely to see any significant traffic from these others, but potentially you will get some.

It is also worth doing a quick search of any regional search engines. Such as if you want to attract Chinese users, you will want to make sure you are listed on Baidu.

Free Search Engine Submission List

  1. Google – https://search.google.com
  2. Bing/Yahoo – https://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster
  3. Yandex – https://webmaster.yandex.com/addurl.xml
  4. InfoTIger – http://www.infotiger.com/addurl.html
  5. Entire Web – https://www.entireweb.com/free_submission/
  6. Active Search Results – https://www.activesearchresults.com/addwebsite.php
  7. ExactSeek – https://www.exactseek.com/add.html
  8. WhatUSeek – https://www.whatuseek.com/addurl.shtml
  9. Jayde – https://www.jayde.com/submit.html
  10. Anoox – https://www.anoox.com/add_for_indexing_free.php
  11. Secret Search Engine Labs – http://www.secretsearchenginelabs.com/add-url.php
  12. Baidu – https://ziyuan.baidu.com/login/index?u=/site/siteadd
  13. Seznam – https://search.seznam.cz/wt/pridej-stranku
  14. Onion Search Engine – https://as.onionsearchengine.com/add_url.php
  15. GigaBlast – https://www.gigablast.com/addurl

By submitting your site to Google and Bing, you will also be indexed on the following:

Enow.Com, Serch.it, Kol.com, Dogpile, Duck Duck Go, AOL, Lycos, Ocean Hero, Ecosia, Virgin Media Search, Norton Search, Talk Talk Search plus lots more

What search engines use Google?

What search engines are powered by Bing?

Any questions or queries, please comment below.

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.