Want to know how to submit URLs to Google? Read on friends!
This morning you’ve opened up your website to the public and you’re very super excited about how it’s going to grow.
Why shouldn’t you be?
Putting a new website project live is something to be hyper-excited about. Seeing your actual publicly accessible site in a browser for the first time is amazing so it’s right to feel excited.
But anyway, for you right now, you’re really happy with how it looks and you can’t wait for people other than your friends and family to see it.
One problem though.
You’ve searched for your site since you put it live and it’s not appearing in Google… at all!
You’ve made searches on your site name, domain name and you’ve even used unique phrases from some of the pages in your site. However…
… nothing, zip, nada, niente…
All the hard work, effort and passion you’ve put in to building out the site, making the creative and writing the content… and no-one will be able to find it!
It’s completely demoralising to say the least.
I feel your pain.
But hold on a minute. Don’t start tearing your hair out just yet, because there is something you can do to start seeing your pages listed in the search results within minutes.
The great news is you can do this directly using tools the search engines have provided for us to do that very thing.
Google is your friend… well sometimes at least! This is one of those times.
You just need to know the easiest way to submit URLs to Google.
Google Search Console
The Search Console is a free online tool provided by Google. It offers account holders a number of different functions to help them manage their websites. Some of these are invaluable.
Firstly it’s useful as a reporting tool that shows you the search terms that have resulted in your pages appearing in Google’s search results. Alongside this it shows you the number of visits your pages have generated for each search term and the average position they appeared in the results.
It also notifies you of problems relating to your pages such as whether or not they work well on all devices. Additionally it shows you if Google sees something undesirable about your site so you can fix it.
I won’t go into further detail here as it’s something I’ve covered in my comprehensive article about how to set up Google Search Console accounts.
However, the reason you’re reading this is the most important detail about the Search Console you’ll be interested in: how do you get pages indexed in Google fast?
The good news is there is a way to indexe pages almost immediately. You just need to use the Google Search Console.
How to Submit Urls to Google’s Index
Firstly you need to create a Google Account. They are free and give you access to lots of other free services and tools, including the Search Console.
You’ll then need to set up a Google Search Console account for your domain. when you’ve done this you’ll be ready to submit urls to Google!
Here’s how you do it!
Google Search Console URL Submissions
The Overview area is the main dashboard of your Search Console Account. It provides a snapshot of your site’s performance.
At the top of the page, you’ll see a search bar.
You just need to add the page URL you want indexed, and press RETURN on your keyboard.
Search Console will then analyze the page and after a minute or so it will provide you with feedback about the URL it has inspected.
If the page is not yet in Google’s index, you will see details about it at the top of the page along with an option to request indexing.
Clicking on REQUEST INDEXING submits the URL to Google. You will see the following pop up while Google works on the URL.
When the indexing request is complete you’ll get the following feedback message.
As you can see, the Search Console tells you that the URL you’ve submitted has been presented to the crawler queue.
In my experience submitting URLs in this way gets them indexed very quickly… almost always within minutes of their submission.
The next thing to do is to search in Google specifically for all the pages it has indexed from your domain.
You do this using the “site:” operator in Google. Just type the following in a Google search, substituting example.com/myurl with the URL you have submitted to the index:
site:example.com/myurl
Using the “site:” operator as I’ve described, your URL should appear as the only search result if the page is indexed.
Bingo!
Summary: How to Submit URLs to Google
- Login to your Search Console Account (create a Google Account if you don’t have one).
- Add the URL you want to submit to the search box at the top of the page and press return.
- Wait for the Search Console to return what it finds.
- Click the REQUEST INDEXING link.
- Wait for Google to submit your URL to its crawler queue (it takes a minute or so).
- Check your URL in Google’s search results!
That’s it for now. Thanks for visiting SideGains.
Paul
Please drop a comment below to let me know if you’ve been able to submit URLs to Google or if you had any problems and I’ll respond asap!