We thought that we would take this time to answer some commonly asked questions about the indexing of websites on search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing.

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 site to them won’t make your site appear instantly, it really is up to them when they start displaying your site.

How do I know if a site has been indexed on a search engine?
Type in the full website address of the site into a search engine (example www.sleeky.co.uk), if your site show up that means that it has been indexed.

Remember your site being indexed is very different to your site showing up for a keywords, as keyword optimisation takes a lot longer and depends on what words you want to show up for.

Should I keep 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.

Again it is worth pointing out here that your site being index is different to your site showing up for your chosen keywords.

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 also smaller search engines look to the larger ones for 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 anyway. So while it may sound like a good idea, you only really need to submit your site to the larger search engines and over time it will appear on the smaller ones without any work needed.