How to Get Your Website on Google: Check, Submit, Then Get Found
Updated: 5 days ago
By Spencer Capron, founder of Capron Media. Updated October 30, 2026.
To get your website on Google, you do three things, and all of them are free: check whether Google already has it, tell Google and Bing where it is, then make each page a clear answer to something your customers search for. The first two take about twenty minutes. This guide walks through all three.
If someone has emailed you offering to register your website with hundreds of search engines for a fee, you can delete it. Everything that matters is below, and none of it costs anything.
How do you get your website on Google?
You get your website on Google in three steps. First, search Google for site:yourdomain.com to see whether it is already there. Second, add the site to Google Search Console, prove you own it and submit your sitemap. Third, give each page a clear title and the words your customers use, so it shows up for the right searches.
Check whether Google already has your site.
Submit it in Google Search Console, and in Bing Webmaster Tools while you are there.
Get found by making each page the clear answer to one thing your customers search for.
Google is clear that none of this is paid: it says "it costs nothing to appear in our organic search results."
Is your website already on Google?
To check whether your website is already on Google, search for site: followed by your domain, for example site:yourbusiness.com. If pages from your site come back, Google has found it. If nothing comes back, or a page you care about is missing, the next section shows how to tell Google where it is.
Google's own SEO Starter Guide puts this check first: "Try searching on Google for your site with the site: search operator." Once your site is in Search Console, the URL Inspection tool gives a firmer answer for any single page: whether it is indexed, and if not, why.
From Capron Media: the free Lite subscription
Registered your site? See where it shows up
See where your site shows up in Google search, without buying a separate tool. Lite does not include the work on your site. Starter does.
How to submit your website to Google, step by step
To submit your website to Google, add it to Google Search Console, prove you own it, submit your sitemap, and ask Google to index your home page. Do the same in Bing Webmaster Tools, then come back a week later and read the Pages report. The whole job takes about twenty minutes, and none of it costs anything.
Create a free Google Search Console account and add your site. Proving you own it is the only fiddly part, and most website builders have a one-click option for it.
Find your sitemap. Most builders create one automatically, usually at yoursite.com/sitemap.xml. Open that address in a browser to check it exists.
Submit the sitemap in the Sitemaps report in Search Console.
Ask Google to index your home page. Open the URL Inspection tool, paste in your home page address, and request indexing.
Do the same at Bing Webmaster Tools: add the site, prove you own it, and submit the same sitemap.
Come back in a week and open the Pages report in Search Console. It shows which of your pages are indexed and, more usefully, which are not and why.
That last step is the one people skip, and it is where the value is. Submitting takes a minute. Reading what came back is how you find out that some of your pages are excluded by a setting someone left on while the site was being built.
Capron Media's own site is on Wix, which builds the sitemap for us. As of October 30, 2026, capronmedia.com/sitemap.xml is an index of seven smaller sitemaps, one of them for blog posts, and our robots.txt file points search engines to it. You do not have to build yours by hand if your website builder does it.
How do I get Google to index my site?
To get Google to index your site, submit your sitemap in Google Search Console, then use the URL Inspection tool to request indexing for your most important pages. Google decides what it indexes and when. A request helps it find a page sooner, and it does not guarantee the page will be included.
A few things Google itself says about it:
A sitemap is a hint, not an order. Google says submitting one "doesn't guarantee that Google will download the sitemap or use the sitemap for crawling URLs on the site."
Requesting indexing has limits. There is "a quota for submitting individual URLs", and "requesting a recrawl multiple times for the same URL won't get it crawled any faster."
Nothing guarantees inclusion. "Requesting a crawl does not guarantee that inclusion in search results will happen instantly or even at all."
How do you submit a website to Bing?
You submit a website to Bing in Bing Webmaster Tools. Add your site, verify that you own it, and submit your sitemap. Bing also supports IndexNow, a free way for a site to tell search engines the moment a page is added, changed or removed. Some website builders and plugins send IndexNow notices for you.
IndexNow is shared: one notice reaches every search engine that takes part. Its own site lists Bing, Naver, Seznam.cz, Yandex, Yep and Amazon. Google is not on that list.
Two engines are enough for most US businesses: Google and Bing. DuckDuckGo says its traditional links are "largely" sourced from Bing, so registering with Bing covers much of DuckDuckGo too.
How do I get my website to pop up when searched?
Your website pops up when one of its pages is the clearest answer to what someone typed. So give each page one job: one service, one question or one place. Use the words your customers use in the page title and the first heading, and write the page for them. Being on Google gets you in; this gets you found.
Google's Starter Guide says to "Think about the words that a user might search for to find a piece of your content." It also says a good title "is unique to the page, clear and concise, and accurately describes the contents of the page."
In practice, for a small business site, that means:
One page for each service you sell, each with its own title, instead of one page that lists everything.
Your customers' words, not your trade's. Someone new to the topic may search differently from someone who knows it well, and Google's guide gives the same example.
A title that says what the page is, with your business name, and the place you serve if it matters to the customer.
If you want to know what else on your site affects this, our guide to what an SEO audit checks covers it, and our SEO audit services page says what our own audit includes and what it costs.
What is search engine registration?
Search engine registration means telling a search engine that your website exists and where its pages are, so it can find and index them. Today you do it for free in each engine's own webmaster tool: Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. You do not pay to be listed, and you do not need a submission service.
It used to be a bigger job. There were dozens of search engines, and each one had to be told about your site. Today search engines find pages by following links, and Google says that for most sites "You usually don't need to do anything except publish your site on the web." Registering still speeds up discovery, and it gives you two free dashboards that show what search engines found.
Is search engine registration free?
Yes. Registering with Google and Bing is free, and so is every tool in this guide. Neither search engine charges to list a website, and neither sells a faster lane. A paid "registration" service can only do the same free steps for you, or send your address to small directories and sites that are not major search engines.
Google warns about exactly these offers. On its page about hiring an SEO, it quotes a spam email it receives itself: "Dear google.com, I visited your website and noticed that you are not listed in most of the major search engines and directories..." Its advice: no one can guarantee a number one ranking on Google, and be wary of anyone who advertises "a 'priority submit' to Google."
A service that submits your site to 1,000 search engines does nothing that Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools do not already do, for free.
Why isn't my website showing on Google?
Your website may not be showing on Google because Google has not found it, a setting is telling Google to leave it out, or the page is indexed but not the clearest answer for the words you searched. Search Console's Pages report tells you which of the first two it is. The third is about the page, not the index.
If a page has not been indexed after a couple of weeks, that is usually information: the page is blocked, too similar to another page, or has little on it worth indexing. Search Console will normally tell you which.
How long does it take for a new website to show up on Google?
It can take a few days to a few weeks for Google to crawl a new page, and a page can only appear in results after that. Google says that "Crawling can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks." Requesting indexing is the closest thing to a fast lane, and it is not a guarantee.
Can you pay Google to rank higher?
No. You can pay Google to show an ad, which appears in a labelled ad slot and stops when you stop paying. You cannot pay, at any price, for a better place in the ordinary results. Google says it "doesn't accept payment to crawl a site more frequently, or rank it higher. If anyone tells you otherwise, they're wrong."
If you want to know how paid and unpaid results differ, see how ranking differs between PPC and SEO.
Ways to get your website on Google, compared
Option | What it does | Cost |
A site: search on Google | Shows whether Google already has pages from your site | Free |
Google Search Console | Registers your site with Google, accepts your sitemap, shows which pages are indexed and why others are not | Free |
Bing Webmaster Tools | The same for Bing, which also supplies much of DuckDuckGo's results | Free |
IndexNow | Tells Bing and other taking-part engines each time a page changes | Free |
Paid "submit to hundreds of engines" services | Sends your address to many small sites; adds nothing to Google or Bing | Paid; not needed |
Capron Media (ours) | Lite subscription (free): See where your site shows up in Google search. See what on your site needs fixing, counted by urgency, with the top three in plain words. Lite does not include the work on your site. Starter does. | Free |
What getting on Google does not do
Being indexed means you are eligible to appear. It does not mean you will appear where anyone looks. Those are separate things, and mixing them up can lead people to decide search does not work for their business.
After your site is on Google, the useful question changes from "how do I get found" to "which of my pages is the clearest answer to something a customer searches for." That is slower work, it does not finish, and it is the part that brings enquiries.
If you would like someone to look at what came back in your Search Console and tell you what it means, book a free call about your site.
From Capron Media: the free Lite subscription
Finished? See what your own site needs
See what on your site needs fixing, counted by urgency, with the top three in plain words. Lite does not include the work on your site. Starter does.
Written by Spencer Capron, founder of Capron Media, a Middleborough, Massachusetts SEO service for small business owners. Spencer is HubSpot SEO II certified, holds CompTIA Security+, and has run recurring SEO programs for 30+ small-business clients. He wrote this post in collaboration with our AI agents, and he reviews everything published here.
Comments