Although many websites these days have plugins and widgets that allow Google and other search engines to continuously crawl a website’s pages, there are still many HTML-based sites that require a bit more time to submit pages. Every time you add a page to an HTML site, you need to manually update the “sitemap.xml” file, then submit this new file to Webmasters Tools in order to give Google the head’s up that there is a new page on your site.
However, thanks to a keen user’s eye, it looks like Google is testing a new feature that allows webmasters to directly submit URLs to Google in Google’s search results page.
How to Submit a URL to Google
To submit a URL directly, search “submit URL to Google” in your search box. Thanks to the search engine’s handy rich answer box feature, a box will appear that allows you to copy and paste the URL and submit it directly to the search engine. This feature works the same way as Google Webmasters Tools works, except this time it’s directly in the search results. Webmasters don’t even need to submit just a sitemap.xml file either — any page will do. Google will then decide whether or not they want to index this URL as well as whether or not they want the URL to show up in organic rankings.
We’re unsure whether or not this rich answer will stay in the search results as is, but for now it serves as a quick and easy way to submit URLs. Need help getting your website search engine friendly? Contact Boston Web Marketing today for full service SEO!