Search Engine Registrations

When the page you are reading now was created (over twenty years ago), it contained links to nearly all the information that web designers needed to know about optimizing a website for nearly a hundred different search engines, and where to go to submit a website to all those search engines. All those other search engines have mostly been exterminated by Google. Even Bing is tiny compared to it.

For practical purposes, one usually need only register (also called "submit") a website with Google and Bing. If you do business in China you'd need to register your website in Baidu, and if you do business in Russia you'd need to register your website in Yandex. If you are located in or doing business in other countries, you'd need to register in the appropriate search engine that most people use in your country. However, realize that Google and Bing already have different languages available and serve up different results depending on where one is. Years ago, there were various German, French, Italian, and other language search engines. Now, it's mainly Google and Bing.

Also, be aware that YouTube, Amazon, and Facebook all have search engines that are used more than Bing. However, YouTube's search engine is useless for anything except their videos, and Facebook's search engine mainly searches Facebook. Amazon's search engine mainly searches Amazon. (AOL search results are actually provided Bing, so no need to register at AOL.)

How To Submit Your Site:

Search Engine Registration is done like this:

1. Create a sitemap.xml file for your site listing all of its important pages.
2. Create an account at Google (if you don't already have one) and at Bing.
3. Log in to your account.
4. Register your "property" (that is, your website) with them, under your account.
5. Verify that you own it (they'll give you instructions for how to prove this).
6. Then submit your sitemap.xml file.

SEMrush also gives a more detailed step-by-step guide to submitting your website to Bing and Google.

Note: We routinely create and submit sitemaps for our clients. If you get stuck trying to do this, or for other help with your website, contact us for a free consultation.