How Often Do I Resubmit my Site?

Never. Once a search engine indexes you, there is no reason to resubmit.

Think of it this way. In my kitchen, in a drawer under my microwave is a phone book. In that phonebook I have the names, phone numbers and street addresses for all my friend and family. If each month they handed me a card with their phone number and street address, it would be a waste of their time and mine. Why? Because they are already in my phone book; I already have them listed.

But what if their phone number has changed? If my phonebook had its own method of checking each phone number and, if it has changed, automatically updating it for me, then it wouldn’t be a problem. Some SEOs will suggest that you need to re-submit each time there is a major change on your Web site. But search engines work in much the same way as that auto updating phone book mentioned a few sentences ago. Each time and engine’s spider visits a site, it will notice and note any changes to the site in its index.

I have also heard SEOs suggest that resubmitting a site prompts an engine to visit. Nothing could be further from the truth. Engines update their indexes on their own cycles and there is nothing that can be done to change that. They will re-spider your site during their natural course of updating their index, which is generally once a month.

That being said, how would someone know if their site has been indexed? That much is easy to determine. Simply go a search engine and type the site URL in the search bar (engineblog.com, for example). If your site is in the engine’s index, your listing will show up.

Instead of spending time with senseless resubmissions (or worse yet, paying someone for resubmissions), take that time to investigate other ways to optimize your site for spider friendliness.