Knowledgebase

An XML Sitemap helps search engine find all pages on your website. If your site is new, it is a great way for all major search engines to add your entire website to their search index.



However, search engines do not update their search index instantly and they prefer unique and useful content. It usually takes about 48 hours for your website to start appearing in search engines but there are reasons why it may take longer.



To check whether or not your website has been added to Google's index you can either login to your Google Webmaster Tools account or you can do a search in Google for;



site:domain.com



(Replacing domain.com with your actual domain)



If you get any results, that means your site has been added to their search engine index. This works for most major search engines so you can try it with Yahoo and Bing as well.



If after 2 weeks your website has not yet been added to Google's search index please consider the following;



1) Check for any errors in your Google Webmaster Tools account. Google will let you know if they cannot properly index any pages on your site.



2) Make sure you have unique text content on your site. If your website is just images, video, or FLASH, search engines may not be able to properly scan and index your site.



3) Get links from other related websites. You can do this by sending out press releases about your new site, posting in online forums related to your website content and placing your link in your forum signature, or using social networking websites like flickr.com, twitter.com, facebook.com etc... to help get the word out about your site.



If your website is a simply duplicate of another site or has nothing unique to offer, you cannot expect to have any kind of success with search engines.