How to Submit Your Website to Google: A Step-by-Step Guide

Google handles over 89.98% of search queries worldwide. For most new websites, indexing does not happen quickly. About 35% of new sites take more than four weeks to appear if the site owner does not submit it directly. Submitting verified sitemaps and pages can speed up the process by about 78%.

What Happens When Google Discovers Your Site

Googlebot checks your website based on public signals, previous crawl history, and the presence of technical files. When your site is found, Google reads your sitemaps and checks your API discovery documents if available. User behavior and signals from Search Console guide Google on what pages should get crawled more often. For large, trusted websites, Google may check for updates every few hours, but for new or small websites, initial discovery can take several weeks. Verified sites and those using properly structured sitemaps get seen much faster than those that wait for organic discovery.

Step 1 – Verify Ownership in Google Search Console

Search Console properties

You have two options for property setup:
– Domain Property covers all subdomains and URLs (both www and non-www, http and https).
– URL Prefix only monitors one specific folder or subdomain. Choose this for granular tracking.

Verification methods

Google allows several methods to verify you own the site:
– HTML file,  Upload a file to your root directory. Works best for static sites, with a 92% success rate.
– DNS TXT Record,  Set a special text record in your domain manager. Needed for full domain properties. Most complete but takes up to 48 hours.
– Google Analytics or Site Kit plugin,  Fastest if tracking code is already in place. Automatic for most platforms.

Sites using the Google Analytics approach tend to finish verification quickly, and often see indexing speed increase of about 28% for new pages.

Why verification matters

Unverified websites do not show full reporting in Search Console. About 63% of crawl or coverage errors are missed by those not using verified properties. Sites without verification are also more likely not to spot mobile usability issues or page removals until search traffic drops. Websites verified in Search Console tend to see up to 30% more pages indexed compared to similar sites left unverified.

Step 2 – Add & Submit Your Sitemap

A sitemap is a file listing the pages you want Google to find. It helps Googlebots discover your pages reliably.

Requirements:
– Limit: 50,000 URLs per sitemap file
– File size: Should not exceed 10 MB uncompressed; use gzip to compress for faster handling
– Recommended: Use <lastmod> tag to tell Google which pages changed

Best Practices:
– If your store or blog has categories, use a sitemapindex to link to several smaller sitemaps
– Highlight seasonal or important pages with <priority> for attention
– Update news or product sites more frequently. Google will recrawl new pages several times faster if they are listed in sitemaps and updated often

In practice, about 78% of the URLs submitted in sitemaps are found by Google before they would be with standard crawling, and errors in sitemap structures can waste 35% of Google’s assigned crawl budget for your domain.

Step 3 – Submit Individual URLs with URL Inspection

Sometimes, you want new content indexed right away. After uploading a new page or making an update, you can request a review in Search Console’s URL Inspection Tool.

Process:
1. Enter your URL and click “Test Live URL.” This checks for issues fetching the page and loads your latest HTML.
2. Any problems with structured data, AMP, or robot meta tags will show up now.
3. Select “Request Indexing” for any important page or update.

For websites publishing job postings or fast-changing deals, using the official Indexing API can reduce the time from new page to Google listing from several days to less than a single day. API submission bypasses standard crawl scheduling for supported content types.

Step 4 – Check Index Coverage & Monitor Progress

You need to check progress regularly to ensure Google is adding and updating the right pages. Use the Index Coverage Report in Search Console.

What to look for:
– Valid pages should be above 95% of your live and public URLs.
– Excluded pages (pages omitted from the index),  Pay close attention to “noindex” tags, blocked by robots.txt, or server errors. Unfixed 404s can cause average indexation loss of 22% across a site.
– Crawl stats,  Aim to have less than 5% server errors (not 5xx codes).

Problems like chained redirects (over three consecutive jumps) can cut search engine crawl efficiency by more than two-thirds. Pages loading in over two seconds also tend to get checked half as often by Googlebots.

Step 5 – Improve Your Chances for Faster Indexing

1. Content signals
2. Content scoring over 85 out of 100 on Google’s quality guidelines is indexed much faster, sometimes in under 48 hours.
3. Mark up videos with VideoObject schema for priority crawling (40% better chance).
4. Technical leverage
5. Keep images compressed and web pages lean. Pages averaging under 1.5 MB see triple the daily crawls.
6. Lazy-load site elements to keep page structure small so Googlebot can reach your content sooner.
7. Authority building
8. Internally linking important pages from at least 10 other pages can speed up indexing by several days. For high authority domains (those with a domain rank above 50), over 80% of new pages show up in Google results in under three days.

Should You Worry About Other Search Engines?

Google covers most searches,  89.98% globally. Bing and Yahoo combined make up about 5%. Their webmaster systems accept the same sitemap files as Google. DuckDuckGo pulls results from Bing, so no special submission is needed. If you target certain countries, note Yandex needs local language signals and meta tags. Submit your sitemap only once through each search engine’s system.

Hitting Common Roadblocks & Fixes

Sitemap errors

Sitemaps must stay under 10 MB (uncompressed) and have no more than 50,000 URLs per file. If your sitemap is too big, split it before uploading. Broken links, such as 404s inside your sitemap, will reduce Google’s crawl attempt rate by 34% or more.

URL Inspection issues

If you see “Crawled – Not Indexed,” try adding structured data markup to the page. This helps resolve about two-thirds of such cases. If you get “Discovered – Not Indexed”, increase the number of internal links to that page. Pages with less than three internal links from elsewhere on the site are overlooked about 74% of the time.

Crawl budget concerns for large sites

For large sites, block session ID and filtering parameters using your robots.txt file to keep Google focused on useful pages. For e-commerce and listings, use the noindex directive for filters and duplicates, as this will prevent up to 57% of wasted crawls on duplicate content.

Conclusion

Submitting your website to Google is a technical process that involves verification, sitemap optimization, regular error checking, and real-time monitoring. Setting up Search Console, structuring your sitemap properly, and checking crawl reports will ensure faster and more complete listing in Google’s results. Real-time indexing monitoring, automated sitemap generation, and consistent technical hygiene reduce the risk of dropped or missing pages.

FAQs

1. What is Google Search Console, and why use it?

Google Search Console is a set of free webmaster tools that report on indexing, crawl coverage, and search performance. It lets site owners submit sitemaps and specific URLs for priority crawling.

2. How do I verify my site on Search Console?

You can use an HTML file, DNS TXT record, Google Analytics, or a platform plugin like Site Kit to confirm ownership. Each method matches Google’s records to your site controls.

3. Can I submit a sitemap automatically?

Yes,  most content management systems offer plugins or settings to generate and submit sitemaps. These update automatically when you publish new pages.

4. What formats can my sitemap be in?

Google accepts XML, RSS, mRSS, txt for URLs, and Atom feeds, but XML is preferred due to its structure and features like <lastmod> and <priority> tags.

5. How often should I update and resubmit my sitemap?

Update your sitemap whenever you add or remove important pages. For active blogs or stores, update daily. Resubmission is only needed when changes are made, as Google will access your sitemap at regular intervals.

6. What does “Request Indexing” do?

It asks Google to review the live version of your page and adds your update to the priority crawl queue. There is a daily limit of 50 requests per site.

7. Why isn’t Google indexing my page?

Most often, the cause is thin or duplicate content (51% of cases), crawl errors like server failures (29%), or canonicalization issues (14%).

8. How long does indexing usually take?

Submitted via sitemap: four hours to four days. Pages not submitted directly can take 3 to 28 days, depending on site authority and update frequency.

9. Should I submit to Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo too?

You can,  upload the same sitemap for Bing and Yahoo. DuckDuckGo collects its results from Bing. No special process is required for most sites.

10. How can I tell which pages Google has indexed?

You can type site:yourdomain.com into a Google search to list indexed pages. For more detail, check the Index Coverage report in Search Console, but search results update more quickly.

Recommendation: Use Search Console’s API for programmatic monitoring of indexing. Pair this with an automated sitemap tool for coverage above 98% of your important pages. Check crawl errors and coverage reports often so you can correct issues before they affect your traffic.

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