Search Engines are responsible for directing Internet users to billions of websites every day. One of the key factors for Google, Bing, Ask and Yahoo in directing Internet users is knowing what is available on the many Internet pages. The Search Engines therefore want to know when content has been added or amended on Internet Pages.
Most Webmasters or Blog owners have a vested interest in Search Engines sending visitors to their website. Traffic from Search Engines can mean success or failure for most websites or Blogs. It is therefore beneficial for Webmasters and Blog owners to assist Search Engines by advising when there is new or changed content on a Site or Blog. A simple and effective means of advising of amended content is ‘pinging’ the Search Engines.
Ping a Search Engine
If you are using a Content Management System (such as Wordpress) you’ll likely be able to ping Search Engines from the Content Management System itself (or from a ‘plugin’). If you require pinging the most popular Search Engines manually then just follow this very simple tutorial.
- Ensure you have an up to date Sitemap.XML file in the root directory of your HTML server domain (there are a number of free online sitemap creation tools).
- Enter the following into the URL address bar of your Internet Browser for each of the following:
- Google: http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ping?sitemap=FULL_URL_TO_YOUR_SITEMAP
- Ask: http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap= FULL_URL_TO_YOUR_SITEMAP
- Yahoo: http://search.yahooapis.com/SiteExplorerService/V1/ping?sitemap=YOUR_URL
- Bing: http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?siteMap= YOUR_URL
Notes:
- FULL_URL_TO_YOUR_SITEMAP: Enter the full URL to the Sitemap>XML file e.g. http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml
- YOUR_URL: Enter the URL of your Domain e.g. http://www.example.com.
- Warning: Make sure that you are not blocking the Search Engine from searching your site. Use a valid robots.txt file.
Conclusion
And that is how simple it is to let the Big 4 Search Engines know that you have updated content (and add to the Search Engine Optimization of your Site)! The Search Engines benefit from a Ping by knowing that there is new content to index on your Website or Blog. You benefit through Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask having up to date information which to supply to Internet users (and hopefully direct those users to your Website).
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thanks this was helpful!