Is there still a form to submit my site to Google?

No. Google retired the public Submit URL form in 2018. Today the only places where you can hand Google a URL are Search Console (sitemaps and the Request indexing button) and the Indexing API for job posting and livestream pages. Any other form that promises to submit your site to Google belongs to a third party.

Does submitting a website to Google cost anything?

No. Search Console, sitemap submission, the URL Inspection tool and the Indexing API are free. Paid submission services add nothing Google does not offer directly, and the ones that blast your URL at hundreds of directories create link spam you may later have to clean up.

How long after submitting does a site show up on Google?

Google says crawling can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks and that it cannot promise a timeline. New sites with no links pointing at them sit at the slow end. Once a site is crawled regularly, new pages are commonly picked up within days.

Does submitting a sitemap get all my pages indexed?

No. A sitemap tells Google which URLs exist and when they changed. Google still decides what to crawl and what to keep. Pages that are thin, duplicated, blocked or broken stay out of the index whatever you submit.

Do I need to submit my site to Google again after changes?

Not the whole site. Update the lastmod date of the changed URLs in your sitemap and use Request indexing for the few pages that matter most. Google re-reads submitted sitemaps on its own schedule, so there is nothing to resubmit.

How to Submit a Website to Google in 2026

To submit a website to Google in 2026 you verify it in Google Search Console and submit an XML sitemap there. For individual pages you use the URL Inspection tool and its Request indexing button, and for job posting and livestream pages there is the Indexing API. The public "Submit URL" form that older guides describe was closed in 2018. Submitting tells Google that your pages exist; it does not make Google index them.

The form you remember is gone

For about twenty years Google had a page where anyone could paste a URL and press a button. It was retired in July 2018, and the old address now sends you to Search Console. Google's reasoning was simple: it wanted submissions tied to a verified owner, through a tool that also shows what happened afterwards.

So if a site today offers to "submit your website to Google" through a form of its own, it is not Google. At best it files your URL into a directory. At worst it sells you a service that creates spammy links to your site.

Route 1: verify the site in Search Console

Search Console is the door to every other route, so start there. Open it with a Google account, click Add property and choose one of two property types:

Domain property: covers every protocol and subdomain of the domain. Verification is a TXT record in your DNS.
URL-prefix property: covers one exact prefix such as https://www.yoursite.com/. Verification options are an HTML file upload, an HTML meta tag, your Google Analytics or Tag Manager snippet, or the same DNS record.

A Domain property saves you from the classic mistake of verifying www.yoursite.com while Google indexes the non-www version, or the other way round. If the DNS record is out of your hands, a URL-prefix property is fine as long as the prefix matches the canonical version of your site.

Verification itself submits nothing, but from this moment Google knows the site has an owner, and you can see everything it finds. The Search Console beginner's guide walks through the reports once you are in.

Route 2: submit an XML sitemap

A sitemap is the real "submit my site" step. It is an XML file listing the URLs you want Google to know about, with a <lastmod> date per URL.

Most platforms already generate one:

Platform	Usual sitemap address
WordPress (core, since 5.5)	`/wp-sitemap.xml`
WordPress with Yoast SEO	`/sitemap_index.xml`
Shopify, Wix, Squarespace	`/sitemap.xml`
Custom site	Whatever you generate, commonly `/sitemap.xml`

If you are not sure where yours is, the sitemap finder looks in the usual places and in robots.txt. Before submitting, run it through the sitemap validator: a sitemap that returns HTML, has stray characters before the <?xml line or lists URLs on a different host will be rejected.

Then in Search Console open Indexing > Sitemaps, type the path under Add a new sitemap and click Submit. The alternative is a line in robots.txt, which Google reads whenever it fetches that file:

Sitemap: https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml

Keep in mind:

One sitemap file holds up to 50,000 URLs and 50 MB uncompressed. Larger sites use a sitemap index file that points to several sitemaps.
Google uses <lastmod> when it is consistently accurate and ignores <priority> and <changefreq>. A lastmod that updates on every request teaches Google to ignore it.
The sitemap ping endpoint was switched off at the end of 2023. Resubmitting the same file does nothing. Changing lastmod on the URLs that changed does.
"Couldn't fetch" shortly after submission is normal for a new property. Give it a day before you debug.

The XML sitemap guide covers the format in detail.

Route 3: request indexing for individual URLs

For a page you need Google to see this week, paste its full URL into the search bar at the top of Search Console. The URL Inspection tool shows whether the page is on Google, when it was last crawled and which canonical Google chose. Click Request indexing and the URL goes into a crawl queue.

Two limits apply. Each property has a small daily allowance of requests; Google does not publish the number, and most people hit "Quota exceeded" after about ten. And a request is a hint, not a command: Google will fetch the page sooner, then judge it like any other page. The step by step version is in how to submit a URL to Google.

Route 4: the Indexing API, for job and livestream pages

Google's Indexing API accepts notifications that a URL was updated or deleted, with a default quota of 200 publish requests per day per Google Cloud project. Google's documentation says it is only for pages with JobPosting structured data or a BroadcastEvent inside a VideoObject, and it names using several accounts to exceed the quota as abuse that can get access revoked.

If you run a job board or stream events, set it up. For a normal site, treat it as a best-effort extra on top of the sitemap, nothing more.

What "submitted" means and what it does not

Search Console uses the word in a specific sense: a submitted URL is one that appeared in a sitemap you submitted. That is one step in a longer pipeline.

Stage	What it means	Where you see it
Submitted	The URL is in a submitted sitemap	Sitemaps report: discovered URLs
Discovered	Google knows the URL exists, has not fetched it	"Discovered - currently not indexed"
Crawled	Googlebot fetched the page	"Crawled - currently not indexed", Last crawl date
Indexed	The page can appear in results	"Submitted and indexed", URL is on Google

Submission gets you to the first row. The rest depends on whether Google wants to crawl the URL and whether the page is worth keeping. A sitemap full of thin, duplicate or blocked pages ends up mostly in the two "currently not indexed" states.

Getting a brand new site found at all

A site with no links from anywhere is the slowest case. Google's main discovery method is following links from pages it already knows, so a sitemap on an unknown domain gives it a list but little reason to hurry. Things that help in the first weeks:

A few real links. Your company's profiles, a partner's site, a supplier page, an industry directory people use. One link from an established site does more than fifty from directories nobody visits.
A Google Business Profile if you serve a local area. It links to your site and gets the business into Maps while the organic side catches up.
Internal links from the homepage to every section, so one crawl of the homepage leads to everything else.
No leftover blocks. Check that the launch did not ship with a noindex tag, a Disallow: / in robots.txt, or (on WordPress) the "Discourage search engines from indexing this site" box ticked under Settings > Reading. The indexability checker shows all of these for a URL in one go.
Request indexing for the homepage and the main section pages. Those few requests seed the crawl.

How long it takes

Google's own wording is a few days to a few weeks, with no guarantee. In practice a homepage with a request behind it is often fetched within a day or two; a long tail of deeper pages follows over weeks as Google works through the sitemap. How long Google takes to index sets out realistic expectations by site type.

Check progress a week after submitting:

Indexing > Sitemaps should show "Success" and a count of discovered URLs.
Indexing > Pages shows how many URLs are indexed and the reasons for the rest. Switch the filter to "All submitted pages" to look only at your sitemap.
The URL Inspection tool answers for any single URL.
A page with impressions in Performance > Search results is indexed by definition.

Doing this automatically

Once the site is verified, the routine is the same every week: notice new or changed URLs in the sitemap, check that each one is fetchable and indexable, submit the ones that qualify, and look later at what Google did. TurboIndex does that loop for you after a Google sign-in. It reads the sitemaps you submitted in Search Console, fetches each new URL with its own crawler, TurboIndexBot, so that a 404, a redirect or a noindex page is never sent (see the bot page), submits the rest through Google's API within the daily quota, and checks each URL with the URL Inspection API over the following two weeks.

What to do next

Add the site to Search Console as a Domain property and verify it.
Validate your sitemap, submit it under Indexing > Sitemaps, and add a Sitemap: line to robots.txt.
Request indexing for the homepage and your main section pages, once each.
Fix anything the indexability checker flags: noindex, robots.txt blocks, redirects, wrong canonicals.
Get a handful of real links pointing at the site.
Come back in a week and read the Pages report before you change anything else.

Frequently asked questions

Is there still a form to submit my site to Google?: No. Google retired the public Submit URL form in 2018. Today the only places where you can hand Google a URL are Search Console (sitemaps and the Request indexing button) and the Indexing API for job posting and livestream pages. Any other form that promises to submit your site to Google belongs to a third party.
Does submitting a website to Google cost anything?: No. Search Console, sitemap submission, the URL Inspection tool and the Indexing API are free. Paid submission services add nothing Google does not offer directly, and the ones that blast your URL at hundreds of directories create link spam you may later have to clean up.
How long after submitting does a site show up on Google?: Google says crawling can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks and that it cannot promise a timeline. New sites with no links pointing at them sit at the slow end. Once a site is crawled regularly, new pages are commonly picked up within days.
Does submitting a sitemap get all my pages indexed?: No. A sitemap tells Google which URLs exist and when they changed. Google still decides what to crawl and what to keep. Pages that are thin, duplicated, blocked or broken stay out of the index whatever you submit.
Do I need to submit my site to Google again after changes?: Not the whole site. Update the lastmod date of the changed URLs in your sitemap and use Request indexing for the few pages that matter most. Google re-reads submitted sitemaps on its own schedule, so there is nothing to resubmit.