How to Get Your Website Into Google and Bing (2026)

Twenty years ago, website owners used "submission tools" that sent their address to hundreds of search engines. Most of those engines no longer exist, and some of those services now do more harm than good. Today a handful of free, official tools cover almost all search traffic.

Step 1: Make sure the site can be indexed

• Check that your pages do not carry a noindex tag. Many site builders add one while a site is "under construction" and nobody removes it.
• Open yourdomain.com/robots.txt and make sure it does not block the whole site with Disallow: /.
• Link every important page from your menu or homepage. Search engines find pages mainly by following links.

Step 2: Create a sitemap

A sitemap is a file, usually at /sitemap.xml, that lists the pages you want found. WordPress, Wix, Squarespace and Shopify create one automatically. Add a line to robots.txt so every crawler can find it:

Sitemap: https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml

Step 3: Add your site to Google Search Console

1. Go to Google Search Console and add a property. A Domain property covers every version of your address (with and without www, HTTP and HTTPS). You verify it by adding a TXT record to your domain's DNS.
2. Open Sitemaps and submit your sitemap address.
3. For a new or changed page, paste its address into URL Inspection and click Request indexing. There is a daily limit, so save it for important pages.
4. Check the Pages report over the next weeks to see what Google indexed and why some pages were left out.

Google retired its old sitemap "ping" address in 2023, so tools that still ping it do nothing. Search Console and the robots.txt line are the supported ways.

Step 4: Add your site to Bing Webmaster Tools

Bing's free Webmaster Tools can import your verified sites straight from Google Search Console, which takes a minute. Submit your sitemap there too. Bing's index also feeds other services, so this step reaches more people than Bing alone.

Step 5: Use IndexNow for quick updates

IndexNow is an open protocol that lets your site tell search engines the moment a page is added, changed or deleted. Bing, Yandex, Seznam, Naver and others support it. Many hosts, CDNs and SEO plugins can send IndexNow pings for you automatically. Google does not use IndexNow, so keep using Search Console for Google.

How long does indexing take?

Anything from a few days to several weeks. New sites with few links take longest. Being in the index does not guarantee a ranking: Google may crawl a page and still choose not to index it if it looks thin or repeats other pages. The Pages report shows reasons such as "Crawled - currently not indexed".

What to avoid

• Paid submission services that promise hundreds of search engines or "guaranteed indexing".
• Requesting indexing for the same page over and over. It does not speed things up.
• Publishing hundreds of near-identical pages just to get more URLs indexed.

A simple checklist

• No noindex tags or robots.txt blocks on live pages.
• Sitemap at /sitemap.xml, listed in robots.txt.
• Search Console verified, sitemap submitted, key pages requested.
• Bing Webmaster Tools set up (import from Google).
• IndexNow switched on through your host, CDN or plugin.

Once the site is indexed, the next job is making the pages worth ranking. Our SEO tips for small business websites cover that.