How to submit your website to Google and Bing search engines

Executive overview

Search engines won't index your site if they don't know it exists. Submitting via Webmaster Tools — not just the URL submission pages — gives you sitemap-level control and indexation visibility.

Use Webmaster Tools over bare URL submission: it handles multiple pages and shows you what's actually indexed.

Two submission methods

  • URL submission pages accept one URL at a time for Google or Bing
  • Yahoo uses Bing's results — submitting to Bing covers Yahoo automatically
  • Webmaster Tools is the preferred method: handles full sitemaps, not single URLs

Submitting via Google Search Console

  • Log in, verify ownership of your site using one of Google's provided methods
  • Select the property, navigate to Crawl > Sitemaps
  • Click "Add/Test Sitemap" and enter your sitemap URL, then submit
  • Google shows pages submitted vs. pages indexed — the two numbers should be close

Submitting via Bing Webmaster Tools

  • Log in, enter your domain, and click Add
  • Fill in the site details form including your sitemap URL
  • Click Save to complete submission

Checking indexation status

  • Use the site: operator in Google or Bing (e.g. site:yourdomain.com)
  • Results show every indexed page on the domain
  • For a single URL, enter the full URL after site: — a returned result confirms indexing
  • No result means the page likely hasn't been indexed yet

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