Website Indexing in Search Engines

A question that we have got asked a lot recently is why a new site isn’t showing up in search engine results. The simple explanation is that a the site is new the search engines haven’t found it yet and it can take a bit of time for them to find and index it.

When we make a new site live there are a few things that we do to make sure that your site does get found, such as submitting a sitemap to the major search engines, but even by doing these it can still take time for a site to appear in search results. Below we have answered some of the most frequently asked questions regarding this subject:

How long does it take for a site to be indexed?
Indexing of a site can take anywhere from a few hours to a few weeks, there is no exact time period for when your site will appear on any search engine. Even submitting a website manually won’t make it appear instantly, it really is up to the search engine itself when your site will start displaying on it.

How do I know if a site has been indexed on a search engine?
Type the full website address of the site into a search engine (example www.teamvalleyweb.co.uk), if your site show up that means that it has been indexed. If you wish to see all the pages that have been indexed simply type ‘ site:yourdomain.com ‘ (example site:teamvalleyweb.co.uk) as this will bring up all the pages of a site that can be found.

Should I keep manually submitting my site until it is indexed?
No, be patient, it does take time but once you have submitted the site once you don’t need to do it again.

Should I keep submitting my site to a search engine once it has been indexed?
No once your site is indexed, the search engine knows about it and will keep checking it on a regular basis to see if there have been any updates or changes.

Do companies that offer to submit a site 1000s of search engines really work?
Most of these are too good to be true; a lot of search engines don’t guarantee a listing and smaller search engines look to the larger ones for their results. These companies also rely on automated systems to submit the sites rather than doing it by hand, which a lot of search engines reject instantly, so using them won’t help your site.

Also while it may sound like a good idea to instantly submit your site to 1000s of search engines, you only really need to submit a site to the larger search engines (e.g. Google & Bing) and once indexed on them it will naturally be indexed on most the smaller ones without any extra work.

Why isn’t my site on the first page when I type in a keyword?
Your site being indexed on a search engine is very different to your site showing up for chosen keywords. It can take a lot longer for your site to begin to rank within terms you associate with your business, especially if these search terms are highly competitive.

While we build all our websites to be search engine friendly, if you are looking to compete for the top spots on competitive terms you will probably need some additional work carried out on your site, this is known as search engine optimisation (SEO) and concentrates not only on your website but other factors outside your website that can help it rank a lot better. If you would like more information on how to rank better for your chosen keywords please contact us