People write to be read. When you write on the internet, there are ways to inform others that you have updated information on your web site or blog and that it is ready to be viewed. Search engines are like librarians and libraries. You have to tell the librarian to catalog and put your book on the shelves of the library before anyone can check it out to read. That is the process I will discuss today. There are a few terms I will walk you through and then explain the mechanics of how to ping your web site or blog to Google, Yahoo, Bing and many other search engines.
Definition of Ping, XML and Sitemap
In order to understand how your site is updated, there are a few terms you need to understand. Each of these widely used terms have distinct meanings and once understood, pinging your XML sitemap won’t sound foreign any more.
The process for notifying search engines that you have a website ready for the spiders to crawl is called pinging. Think about it like this…A submarine in the ocean can not see where it is going without sonar, so as it travels through the water, it “pings” with sound. This pinging sound goes out and when it hits a rock, another submarine, etc. it sends or pings the sound back. So in essence, you are sending a signal out to Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines saying, “Here I am! Come over and read me again!” every time you ping your website, blog or new post.
XML (Extensible Markup Language) are the rules used for encoding documents so that servers can read them. It is that mish mash of coding most people ignore. An XML document is simply a long string of Unicode characters. The ISO/IEC 10646 (Unicode) International Standard’s definition of “character” is “a member of a set of elements used for the organization, control, or representation of data”. There are more than 109,000 characters. In a very abstract way, think of it as this…If I say, “Please pass me a Kleenex,” you know that I mean “a tissue” even if it isn’t the “Kleenex” brand. Kleenex and tissue can mean the same thing. So putting the characters in the correct order on a web page identifies all the parts for the spiders in the XML language they understand.
A sitemap or site map gives an overall top to bottom view of a web site’s contents read by the crawling spiders. It is organized hierarchical using XML as the formatting language. Sitemaps provide information about the different pages or URL’s of your website or blog. After the pinging and crawling is done, the new URL is then indexed by the search engines, such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. Well written sitemaps help the crawling to take place speedily and a blog that is crawled quickly can get indexed, found and read faster by the internet audience.
Phew! You can let out a long breath because that’s over!
Pinging Your Sitemap
When you have a new post on your website or blog, it is easy and advisable to let the search engines know that you have new content so that it can be indexed quickly. This is done by pinging your XML sitemap which simply means you are sending out a message that says, “I just updated my site. Come check it out and announce it to the world.” Simple.
There are many places that you can ping your new content with the biggies being Google, Yahoo and Bing. You can code your blog to automatically ping these search engines every time you write and publish a new post or you can manually ping each search engine yourself. Either way, the end result is that you will get the new information in your web site or blog indexed quickly thus making it searchable for the internet masses.
The first step, however, is to ensure that you have an XML sitemap on your website or blog. One of the most popular sitemap generators is XML-Sitemaps.com and an upgraded sitemap generator is available at a small price. Of course, if you use WordPress, there are many plugins available for free too. The key is that you must have a sitemap in order to talk to the spider bots or spider crawlers so that your website or blog can be indexed.
How to Ping Your Sitemap to Google
Once you have the XML sitemap in place for your website or blog, it only takes a simple ping to Google every time you have an update that needs to be indexed by the search engine. Open a blank web page, paste the URL in the address bar and click to submit the ping to Google.
The Google ping url is:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap=http://YOURWEBSITE.COM/sitemap-file.xml
For instance, my ping would be:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap=https://theredheadriter.com//sitemap.xml
or
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping
Depending on which URL ping you use, when you ping Google, you will get the following message:
or
How to Ping Your Sitemap to Yahoo
Once you have the XML sitemap in place for your website or blog, it only takes a simple ping to Yahoo every time you have an update that needs to be indexed by the search engine. Open a blank web page, paste the URL in the address bar and click to submit the ping to Yahoo.
The Yahoo ping url is:
http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit
On this page you can enter your website, web page or update the site feed.
The form looks like this:
How to Ping Your Sitemap to Bing
Once you have the XML sitemap in place for your website or blog, it only takes a simple ping to Bing every time you have an update that needs to be indexed by the search engine. Open a blank web page, paste the URL in the address bar and click to submit the ping to Bing.
The Bing ping url is:
http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?siteMap=http://YOURrssfeedURL.COM
For instance, my feed ping would be:
http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?siteMap=http://feeds.feedburner.com/theredheadriter
When you ping Bing, you will get the following message:
Pinging URL List
Obviously there are many places you can ping when you have new content on your website or blog. Unlike the sonar pinging submarine during war, you want to be found, so the more places you ping, the better it will be in getting indexed and read. Here is a quick pinging URL list of the big search engines as well as the automatic pinging sites that will ping many search engines at once for you.
Google Ping: http://blogsearch.google.com/ping
Yahoo Ping: http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit
Bing Ping: http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?siteMap=http://YOURrssfeedURL.COM
Ask Ping: http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http://www.YourWebSite.com/sitemap.xml
Weblogs.com ping: http://weblogs.com/
Technorati ping: http://technorati.com/
Bloglines ping: http://www.bloglines.com/
Auto pinging sites that will do the work for you include:
Sitemapping.net: http://sitemapping.net/
Pagerank.net: http://www.mypagerank.net/service_pingservice_index
Autopinger.com: http://autopinger.com/
After you have finished preparing and implementing the XML sitemap on your website or blog, pinging is super easy whether you do it manually or if you use an autopinger.
Woo Us To Your Blog
The last “Woo Us To Your Blog” post was a how to guide for StumbleUpon which is a great place to promote your site to gain more traffic!
As always, attached is the weekly Linky to enter either the main URL to your site or add each post you publish throughout the week. You don’t have to do anything special, just drop your link in and get a little extra exposure to your site.
Until next week’s wooing post, I hope you have a great week and experience enjoyable blogging!
Thank you for this great post! Excellent advice as always.
Have a blessed weekend Red!
Thank you, Red! Another one of your pages I have on my "Favorites" list…lol…I'm going to have to make my own folder for you!
thanks for the ping tutorial, i have created a new blog, till now i don't know about ping. thanks to u for this info
Thank you so much, I'm creating a sitemap now while I read on!!
Awesome information!
Red you astound me the things you know.
PS how's your new blog design coming?? I can't wait to see it! I love a good bloggy makeover…
PS I have linked up two posts – One is a post I wrote on commenting – it was POPULAR! and the other is a Writers Workshop one I've just done… the movie of my life (actually just a day) starring Janeanne Garofolo… its funny.
I don't usually shamelessly self-promote but this IS Woo Us to Your Blog so I am doing my best to WOO!!
The ping to Yahoo is really not up to date! But thanks for all information, its great stuff.
Yep, Yahoo was bought out by Bing, so in order to ping it, you have to set up a Bing account.
thanks for sharing this info. this is very useful for my website
You’re welcome Pankaj!
This is awesome information for me. Can’t believe I haven’t found this before;(
Thank you for sharing all that. You just got bookmarked;))
I wonder if those links are still accurate today (2013)? I’ll check that.
Best Regards to you!!
Glad you found it!
No programming jargon and it works! Thank you for that. If every programing instruction was written this well the world would be a better place. Too many pretentious people who think they need to throw out their confusing and often pointless industry terms. Thanks again for explaining things in English.
Thank you Tony! I try really hard to make the teaching posts easy enough for a beginner. So if I were to throw heavy words in it, the reader would leave still confused and I DON’T want that to happen! I’m so glad you found it helpful! Thanks for telling me!
Thanks you this,
You’re welcome!
Thanks for sharing this information.. very usefull..
You’re welcome!
Hi, Thank you very much for this invaluable information. When you find articles like these it makes internet marketing so much easier. Thank you very much.
You’re welcome!
Great info for getting a sitemap found! Without even adding my sitemap xml to googles webmaster tools it got indexed in under 12 hours 🙂 Thanks!
Great Brad! Glad I could help!
Thank you SO much for this! EXTREMELY helpful!
My pleasure!
thank to your tutorial sitemap… nice info……..
My pleasure! 🙂
Hi…. Sherry, Thank you very much for this invaluable information. When you find articles like these it makes internet marketing so much easier. Thank you very much.
You’re welcome.
Thanks so much for this great article! This is exactly what I need to know to help me get my fairly new personal finance website off the ground (sort of speaking).
Thank you.
Michael Mota
negativetopositivenetworth.com
Great! I’m glad I could help! 🙂
Thanks
You’re welcome! 🙂
Thank you for this awesome article. This is the first article of yours that I have read, and I plan and look forward to reading many more. I appreciate your writing style. You write in a way that is very clear, precise and easy to follow. I appreciate it when someone gives instructional information by talking to their readers and not talking down to them. Your clever analogies and examples definitely make comprehending the subject matter much easier. You have a new fan and reader!
🙂 You’re very welcome and thank you for visiting!
thanks for you
theredheadriter.com is best
Thanks!
Thanks so much
You’re welcome!
Very very and very useful. Thanks for sharing great article
You’re welcome!
Nice post for internet marketers. This post help to improve my marketing skill and I hope you will do good for your career.
The ping to Yahoo is really not up to date! But thanks for all information….
Hi Sherry
Nice post , its very helpful for my new blog!
Yes thanks for this. With this my website quickly get indexed by Google and Bing as I use the blogger platform
Thanks for this tip, with this I have been able to get my website indexed
It’s an awesome article for all the internet
viewers; they will obtain advantage from it I am sure.
getting better results after ping in to google