Submit Website to Google: Crawling & Indexing

Crawling

Search engines use robots (also called crawlers or spiders) to find content on the internet. These robots start from one webpage and jump to other webpages through links on the page, discovering new and updated content. Content can be web pages, images, videos, PDFs, etc., but regardless of format, content is discovered through links. For example, Googlebot starts crawling from a small number of web pages, then finds new URLs through links on these pages and adds them to its index.

Indexing

Search engines store and organize crawled content in a huge database called an index. When a page is indexed, it has a chance to appear in search results. The index is the data that search engines use to store all discovered content that they consider worth showing to users. Good website structure and internal links help improve indexing efficiency.

Ranking

When users search, search engines look for highly relevant pages in their index and sort them by relevance to solve the user queries. The higher the ranking, the more relevant the search engine considers the page to the query.

Of course, all three processes rely on complex Google algorithms and have separate names: Trawler, Alexandria, Mustang.

Submit to Webmaster Tools

There are several webmaster tools corresponding to different search engines:

1. Google Search Console: Google
2. Bing Webmaster Tools: Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo
3. Yandex Webmaster: Yandex
4. Naver Webmaster Tools: Naver
5. Baidu Webmaster Tools: Baidu
6. Search engines without webmaster tools: Ask.com, Ecosia, AOL, Yep, Brave Search

Google Search Console (GSC) provides free search engine optimization services. Website owners can submit websites and sitemaps to speed up indexing, monitor website performance in Google search results, view indexing status and crawl errors, analyze search queries and click data, and optimize mobile-friendliness and page speed. Visit Google Search Console

Bing Webmaster Tools provides free search engine optimization services. Website owners can submit websites and sitemaps to speed up indexing, monitor website performance in Bing search results, view indexing status and crawl statistics, analyze search queries and click data, and diagnose website health issues. It's worth mentioning that most of this website's organic search traffic comes from Bing rather than Google, indicating that Bing has important value in certain market segments. Visit Bing Webmaster Tools

Baidu Webmaster Tools (formerly Baidu Webmaster Platform) provides website submission, index volume queries, crawl diagnostics, and other functions. Compared to Google Search Console, Baidu Webmaster Tools has simpler functionality, with significant gaps in user experience and tool practicality. Many website owners report that even after submitting websites and sitemaps through this platform, pages are not easily indexed by Baidu; even if pages are successfully indexed and ranked, they are often pushed down by paid search results, making it difficult to achieve ideal organic search traffic.

Other search engine tools include: Yandex Webmaster (visit) provides website submission, sitemap submission, index monitoring, and other functions; Naver Search Advisor (visit) supports website registration, sitemap submission, index management, and other functions; Qwant does not provide traditional webmaster tools, but website owners can submit a ticket to request website indexing; Cốc Cốc Webmaster (visit) is Vietnam's second-largest search engine, providing website submission and index monitoring functions; Mojeek is a UK-based independent search engine that does not provide manual submission and mainly discovers and indexes websites through crawlers; Sanook is Thailand's largest portal and search engine, currently without a public website submission method; Brave Search supports direct website submission or joining the Web Discovery Project.

CMS Connection to Webmaster Tools

I haven't operated frontend code embedding, so I'll first explain how to connect CMS to webmaster tools.

1. WordPress

Visit Site → Tools → Marketing → Traffic, then scroll down to Site Verification Services. For those who don't know how, see the English tutorial

You can also use third-party SEO plugins. I use Rankmath; Yoast and AIOSEO also support this.

2. Wix

I have a website built with Wix, and this is what it looks like after connection.

English tutorial for Wix connecting to GSC, Pinterest, Bing, Naver, etc.

Verify Site Ownership

There are seven methods in total to verify site ownership: DNS record (3:00), HTML file upload (5:38), HTML tag (7:03), Google Analytics (8:04), Google Tag Manager (9:36), Google Sites (11:03), and Blogger (11:43). For detailed steps, refer to Google's official tutorial on YouTube (video displayed in the Hero section above).

1. Single URL Index Submission

Unindexed pages are grayed out for many reasons (this page is because it was just published and hasn't been crawled yet).

After successful submission, it looks like this. You can check after a few days to see if it's indexed normally.

2. Sitemap Index Submission

For third-party sitemap generation, you can read the tutorial

3. Batch Submission Methods

For websites that need to submit a large number of pages in batches, manually submitting individual URLs is too inefficient. Here are several batch submission methods:

Google/Bing Indexing API

Both Google and Bing provide Indexing APIs that allow developers to submit URLs programmatically in batches. This method is suitable for website administrators with technical capabilities and can achieve automated submission.

Google Indexing API: Requires OAuth 2.0 authentication and supports submitting new, updated, or deleted URLs. The API limit is 200 URLs per day, suitable for small and medium-sized websites. For detailed usage, refer to Google official documentation.

Bing Indexing API: Bing also provides a similar API interface that supports batch URL submission. Similar to Google Indexing API, it requires API key authentication. For more information, refer to Bing IndexNow documentation.

The advantage of using Indexing API is high automation, which can be integrated into content management systems (CMS) to automatically submit when pages are published or updated. For users who need to learn more technical details, refer to our search engine indexing tools guide.

IndexNow Protocol

IndexNow is an open protocol initiated by Microsoft Bing and has been supported by Google, Yandex, and other search engines. IndexNow allows websites to notify search engines of URL changes through simple HTTP requests without complex authentication processes.

How IndexNow works: Websites generate an API key, place the key file in the website root directory, then submit URL lists through HTTP GET or POST requests. Search engines will crawl and index these URLs as soon as possible after receiving notifications.

Advantages of using IndexNow:

• Simple and easy to use: Only requires an API key and HTTP request
• Multi-search engine support: One submission, multiple search engines receive
• Real-time notification: Immediately notify search engines after URL changes
• No quota limits: Unlike Google Indexing API which has daily limits

For Next.js websites, you can automatically call the IndexNow API when pages are published or updated. For more technical implementation details, refer to our search engine indexing tools guide.

Third-Party Tools

In addition to using official APIs, there are some third-party tools that can help batch submit URLs:

• SEO tool plugins: Such as Yoast SEO, RankMath and other WordPress plugins that support automatic submission of newly published pages
• Website monitoring tools: Such as Ahrefs, SEMrush and other SEO tools that provide URL submission functions
• Automation tools: Such as Zapier, Make, etc., which can set up automated workflows to automatically submit URLs when content is updated

When choosing third-party tools, pay attention to the security and reliability of the tools to ensure that website information will not be leaked. At the same time, it is recommended to prioritize using official APIs or IndexNow protocol for better support and guarantees.

4. Website Structure Optimization and External Link Building

When the website structure is friendly enough, Google can crawl and index all pages without submitting anything. For how to optimize website structure, please see the tutorial. At the same time, you need to configure the robots.txt file to control crawler behavior and ensure there are no redirect chain issues. Adding external links to different pages helps index corresponding pages. For building external links, you can read the link building article. Combined with internal linking strategies, the effect is even better.

5. Maintain Update Frequency

Maintaining regular content updates sends signals that make crawlers frequently crawl website content. It's best to maintain regular frequency for publishing or updating content: homepage, feature pages, solution pages, blog posts, and various other pages. Don't go a week without publishing, then publish thousands of pages in one week. Besides not being indexed, if page quality is not high, the entire site may be penalized.

GSC can show Google crawl details.

6. Technical Issue Resolution

The robots.txt file, X-Robots-Tag, and Noindex tags will all prevent Google from crawling pages. There are many reasons for pages not being indexed, and some non-traffic-oriented pages don't need to be indexed. At the same time, you need to check if redirect chains affect page indexing.