Question: How do I know when my pages are listed?

I've submitted all my web pages to the search engines, and I know it may take a while for them to get in, but how do I know when they are in? Will the search engine notify me?

I know I can run searches for keywords, but what if my page is listed, and ends up at number 5,000 - I'd never find it!

Answer

First of all, the answer is no, the search engines won't notify you. Actually, for most of the search engines, you probably didn't submit your email address, so they couldn't notify you if they wanted to.


So how will you know? Well, there are a couple methods you can use.

1. In a search engine, type the entire title of your page, with quotes around it. For example, if I was looking for this page, I would go to the search engine and type "Search Engine Page Listing - Tracking Your Site Submissions". The number of pages which have that exact sequence of words will be very small, so I won't have to worry about whether my page is in the top listings. If it's there, I'll find it. Of course, you don't have to use the page title; you can use any distinctive phrase - just remember to put quotes around it, so the search engine looks for that entire phrase.

2. Another possibility is to do a site search. The exact syntax may be different at various search engines; this is what you would type at google: site:virtu-software.com "Ask Doug"

This searches for pages with the phrase "Ask Doug" hosted at the site virtu-software.com.

Or, if you don't care about looking for a particular phrase, you can just type site:virtu-software.com (Obviously, you would replace "virtu-software.com" with your own domain.)

Happy hunting!