Search engine submission
In the past, websites had to be submitted to search engines in order to be found at all: you submitted the homepage URL, and the search engine would eventually add the site to its index. In the 1990s and 2000s, many website owners even submitted their sites multiple times using automated programs. Today, such classic submission is no longer necessary: crawlers such as Googlebot find new websites themselves as soon as they are linked somewhere. What does make sense is verifying your own website in the search engines' tools. This article shows how; the encyclopedia article on search engine entries explains why classic submission services are outdated.
How do websites get into the index today?
Search engines discover new pages mainly via links – from other websites as well as within your own website. Their crawlers visit the web continuously and often find new content after a short time. A few links from other websites are usually enough for a new domain to be found. However, there is no guarantee of inclusion in the index: the search engine decides for itself which pages it indexes.
Why registering in Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools is still worthwhile
Anyone launching a website or a new online shop doesn't want to wait until crawlers happen to find it. The search engines' tools can be used to trigger and speed up indexing. Even more importantly, you can see which pages are in the index, what problems there are, which search terms the website appears for and how often it is clicked. After changes – such as new categories or a relaunch – you can also quickly notify Google of new content.
Registering with the most important search engines
In German-speaking countries, Google and Bing are the most relevant. Bing also supplies results to services such as Yahoo, Ecosia, DuckDuckGo and ChatGPT's web search. This is how registration works:
Google: registering via Search Console
Google Search Console is free of charge. First, the website is created as a property and ownership is confirmed – for example via a DNS record with the domain provider, an HTML file, a meta tag or an existing Google Analytics account. It's best to choose a domain property that covers all subdomains as well as http and https variants. There are then two ways to point Google to content:
Submit an XML sitemap: the sitemap lists all pages that should be indexed. Google retrieves it regularly and thus discovers new and changed pages.
“Request indexing” via the URL inspection tool: this lets you queue an individual new or changed page for crawling – useful for important individual pages, not for thousands of URLs.
It can still take a few days for new pages to appear in the index. The “Pages” report in Search Console shows whether inclusion has worked.
Bing: registering via Bing Webmaster Tools
For Bing, registration is done via Bing Webmaster Tools, which require a free Microsoft account. Anyone who has already verified their website in Google Search Console can import it there with just a few clicks. A sitemap can then be submitted here too. In addition, Bing supports the IndexNow protocol, which allows websites to automatically report new or changed pages; many shop systems and plugins offer an integration for this. Indexing and search performance can also be monitored in Bing Webmaster Tools.