How to Submit Your Website to Google Search (Step by Step)

Submitting your website to Google search takes about 10 minutes, and you can do it for free using Google Search Console. Most people don’t need to wait for Google to find their site on its own. You can tell it exactly where to look.

Here’s the part most guides skip: before you touch Google Search Console, you need to check that WordPress isn’t actively blocking search engines. One unchecked box during setup can make your entire site invisible to Google, and you won’t know it until weeks have passed.

This guide walks you through the full process: checking your WordPress settings first, setting up Google Search Console, submitting your sitemap, requesting indexing for individual pages, and fixing the indexing problems that come up even after you’ve done everything right.

Before You Submit Your Website to Google Search

Two quick checks before you do anything in Google Search Console. Skip these, and the rest of the process won’t matter.

Check WordPress Isn’t Blocking Search Engines

WordPress has a built-in setting that tells Google to stay away from your site. It is meant for development environments, but it often gets left on after launch by mistake.

To check it:

1. Log in to your WordPress dashboard
2. Go to Settings > Reading
3. Look for the option: Discourage search engines from indexing this site, and make sure the box is unchecked

This is one of the most common issues we see with newly launched WooCommerce stores. The site goes live, the owner spends weeks wondering why nothing shows up in Google, and the fix is one checkbox. If you recently finished setting up WooCommerce on WordPress and your pages aren’t appearing in search, check this first.

Also, check your robots.txt file. Visit yourdomain.com/robots.txt in a browser. You should see a line that says, User-agent: * followed by Allow: /. If it says Disallow: / instead, Google is being blocked from crawling everything. Fix it by removing or correcting that disallow rule before proceeding.

Check If Google Has Already Found Your Site

Before submitting anything, see whether Google has already discovered your site on its own. Open Google and type: site:yourdomain.com.

If pages appear in the results, Google has already indexed at least part of your site. You can still submit your sitemap to make sure all pages are covered.

If nothing appears, your site isn’t indexed yet. That’s what the rest of this guide fixes.

How to Submit Your Website to Google Search (Step by Step)

The main method for submitting your website to Google search is through your XML sitemap in Google Search Console. Your sitemap is a file that lists every important page on your site, so Google knows exactly what to crawl. Here’s how to do it from start to finish.

Step 1: Create or log into a Google account

Go to google.com and sign in. If your site represents a business, use the Google account linked to your business. This keeps everything in one place.

Step 2: Open Google Search Console and add your property

Go to Google Search Console. Click the property selector in the top left and choose Add property. Enter your full domain name (for example, example.com), then click Continue.

Step 3: Verify you own the site

Google will ask you to prove you own the domain before giving you access. The recommended method is the DNS TXT record. Google provides a short code. You paste it into your domain registrar’s DNS settings. Once Google confirms it, your property is verified.

This method is worth the extra two minutes because it doesn’t add any code to your site, and it stays valid permanently.

Alternative methods include uploading an HTML file to your server, adding an HTML meta tag to your homepage, or connecting via Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager if you already use those.

Step 4: Find your XML sitemap URL

If you are on WordPress with Rank Math or Yoast SEO installed, your sitemap is generated automatically. For most WordPress sites, it lives at: yourdomain.com/sitemap_index.xml

You can also check yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml if the above doesn’t load. Rank Math and Yoast SEO create sitemap index files that point Google to separate sitemaps for posts, pages, and products.

If you don’t have an SEO plugin installed, you won’t have a sitemap. Install Rank Math or Yoast SEO from the WordPress plugin directory and activate it. Both create your sitemap automatically.

Step 5: Submit your sitemap to Google Search Console

In your Google Search Console dashboard, click on Add a new sitemap field, paste your sitemap URL, and then click Submit.

Google will confirm the sitemap was received. You’ll see it listed under Submitted sitemaps with a status of Success.

Step 6: Check the confirmation status

After submitting, refresh the Sitemaps page. Google shows you how many URLs it discovered from your sitemap. If the number looks right for the size of your site, everything is working. If the number is zero or very low, your sitemap may not be loading correctly. Go back to Step 4 and confirm the URL is accessible.

Most guides stop here. The next section covers what happens when you need to go faster.

How to Submit Individual URLs to Google

Submitting your sitemap tells Google about your entire site. But if you just published a specific page and want Google to check it quickly, the URL Inspection Tool in Google Search Console is the faster route.

Here’s how to use it:

1. In Google Search Console, paste the full URL of the page into the search bar at the top
2. Click Test Live URL to confirm the page is accessible to Google
3. If the page loads correctly, click Request Indexing
4. Google adds it to a priority crawl queue

You can submit up to 10 individual URLs per day this way, according to Google’s official documentation. It doesn’t guarantee immediate indexing, but it does move the page to the front of the queue.

Worth knowing before you rely on this for every post: If you’re using Rank Math on WordPress, the plugin integrates directly with the Google Indexing API. Starting from version 1.0.42, Rank Math pings Google automatically every time you publish or update a post. For most WordPress users, this makes manual URL submission unnecessary for day-to-day content. You’d only use the URL Inspection Tool for pages that haven’t been picked up after a few weeks, or for critical pages after a major update.

What Happens After You Submit Your Website to Google

Submitting your sitemap puts your site in Google’s crawl queue. It does not mean your pages are indexed immediately.

According to Google Search Central, crawling after submission can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. Newer sites with no backlinks or traffic history generally take longer. Sites with strong internal linking and some external links from other pages tend to get picked up faster.

In Google Search Console, you can monitor progress under the Pages report (formerly called Index Coverage). This report uses four status categories that are worth understanding:

• Submitted and indexed: Google found the URL in your sitemap and indexed it. This is the result you want.
• Discovered, currently not indexed: Google found the URL but hasn’t crawled it yet. It’s in the queue. This is normal for new sites and large sites with many pages.
• Crawled, currently not indexed: Google visited the page but chose not to index it. This usually points to a content quality issue or a technical problem.
• Excluded: Google deliberately skipped the URL. Often this is correct (for pages you’ve set to noindex), but sometimes it flags a problem.

The Google Page Indexing Report documentation covers each status in detail. Check it if you see a status that doesn’t make sense for a page you want indexed.

Indexing and ranking are different things. Google indexing means the page is in Google’s database. Ranking means it appears in search results for a specific query. Once your pages are indexed, ranking depends on content quality, backlinks, site authority, and on-page SEO, not the submission process.

Why Google Still Won’t Index Your Pages

You’ve submitted your sitemap, waited a few weeks, and some pages still show “Discovered, currently not indexed” or “Crawled, currently not indexed” in Google Search Console. This section covers the real reasons that happen.

Accidental noindex Tag

SEO plugins can accidentally mark pages as noindex if misconfigured. In Rank Math, check Rank Math > Titles & Meta and review the settings for each post type. In Yoast SEO, go to SEO > Search Appearance. Make sure “Show in search results” is enabled for the content types you want Google to find. One incorrectly configured global setting will block entire sections of your site.

WordPress Crawl Traps are Eating Your Crawl Budget

This one trips up a lot of WordPress and WooCommerce stores. Google allocates a crawl budget to each site, roughly how many pages it will crawl in a given timeframe. WordPress creates extra URLs by default that waste this budget on pages with no SEO value.

Common culprits:

• Category and tag archive pages: Every post lives on multiple archive pages. If these aren’t canonicalized or set to noindex, Google may spend crawl budget there instead of your real content.
• Media attachment pages: WordPress creates a separate URL for every image you upload. These pages are blank except for the image. They drain the crawl budget with zero return.
• Paginated archive pages: /blog/page/2/, /blog/page/3/ and so on. Google rarely indexes these, but they still eat into the crawl queue.

Set your SEO plugin to the noindex tag for archives and media attachment pages. In Rank Math, this is under Rank Math > Titles & Meta > Media. Disable Media Attachment Pages entirely. For Yoast SEO, go to SEO > Search Appearance > Media and set attachment pages to redirect to the attachment itself.

Slow page speed compounds this. Google uses a mobile-first crawl, and if your site loads slowly on mobile, Googlebot may deprioritize your pages entirely. Start with optimizing your WordPress images, which are usually the largest contributors to slow load times.

Orphan Pages

An orphan page is a page with no internal links pointing to it. Google finds pages mainly by following links. If a page exists in your sitemap but no other page links to it, Google often treats it as low priority. Add internal links from related posts and pages to pull it into your site’s link structure.

Security Plugins Accidentally Blocking Googlebot

Some WordPress security plugins block bots by IP range. Googlebot uses a known range of IP addresses, but aggressive firewall rules can catch it accidentally.

If you’ve recently tightened your WooCommerce security and noticed a slowdown in indexing at the same time, check whether your security plugin has an allowlist for verified bots. Also, check for any recent changes to your robots.txt file that might have added new Disallow rules.

Thin or Duplicate Content

This is the hardest to hear, but “Crawled, currently not indexed” often means Google visited the page and decided the content wasn’t strong enough to add to its index.

A short product description with three sentences, a category page with no editorial content, or a blog post that covers the same ground as ten others on your site, all of these are candidates for being skipped. Fixing duplicate title tags in WordPress is a good starting point if you’re seeing this across multiple pages.

Most guides on how to submit your website to Google search stop at the sitemap. The real work starts when you check why the pages you submitted aren’t showing up.

Conclusion

Submitting your website to Google search comes down to three things: making sure WordPress isn’t blocking crawlers, submitting your XML sitemap through Google Search Console, and then monitoring the Pages report to catch anything that didn’t get indexed.

The submission itself takes about 10 minutes. What takes longer is identifying and fixing the technical issues that prevent Google from indexing your pages after you’ve submitted them.

For most WordPress and WooCommerce sites, the combination of the right SEO plugin, a clean sitemap, and proper noindex settings for archive pages will cover 90% of indexing problems. For the rest, Google Search Console’s Pages report tells you exactly which pages aren’t indexed and why.

Once your pages are indexed, ranking is the next step. Our WooCommerce SEO guide covers the full picture for store owners.

Frequently Asked Questions