You just launched a new site for your startup and you are ready for the traffic to flow. Lets not fight the obvious, being indexed by Google (and to a lesser extent Yahoo) is important for future traffic goals. The common rule of thumb is if a website is linking to your new startup site, the search engines will find it. To start, lets determine if your new site has been found.
Enter “site:www.yoursite.com” into the search bar in Google and Yahoo.
If the result is “Your search - site:www.yoursite.com - did not match any documents”, your site is not indexed. The good news is, it is easy to get indexed once you have your XML sitemap created.
How do I get indexed by Google? Google provides Webmaster Center that allows you to submit your XML sitemap. This tool will let you know if Google is having trouble indexing your site……valuable information to say the least. The quick version is to submit your URL only to Google. I still recommend using webmaster tools.
How do I get indexed by Yahoo? Yahoo has a toned down version of the Google tool called Site Explorer. Yahoo also has a quick version of URL submit.
MSN does not have a formal webmaster tool but you can submit your URL.
After adding your sitemap to these tools run the “site:www.yoursite.com” again to make sure you are now fully indexed.
[...] additional to its index. If you submitted an XML site map in Google’s Webmaster Tools (how-to), you will have an idea of how many URL’s have been submitted to Google. This is not needed [...]
Pingback by Tracking Your Site in Google’s Index • Startup Hustle — January 3, 2008 @ 6:04 am