The modern Search Engines have revolutionized the mode of crawling the websites for relevant keywords. Unlike the olden times when you needed to submit and re-submit your website periodically to the Search Engines in order to enable them crawl your website, the modern bots used by popular Search Engines, like Google, Yahoo and MSN, do not necessarily require you to submit and re-submit your website for crawling purposes.
Basically, submissions serve a simple purpose of letting the Search Engine know that you have a website and would like to draw its attention for crawling purposes when a user enters the relevant keyword in the Search box. Re-submissions are usually undertaken when new pages/features are added and you need to draw the attention of Search Engines towards these new pages/features.
These concepts have become outdated since Search Engines have become so powerful during the past decade or so that hardly any site exists without their notice. They use robots (called ‘bots’ or ‘spiders’ or crawlers’) that are essentially automated programs designed specifically to scour through the Internet in order to locate any site(s) pertaining to the searched item. Once found, the sites are automatically included in their database.
There is no need to re-submit your website in the following instances:
- If your website is already being crawled by the Search Engines and enjoy decent SERP ranking.
- If your website does not violate any terms and conditions of Search Engines.
In all other cases, it’s better to re-submit your website for proper indexing.
Unless your website is found to be in serious breach of the terms and conditions of Search Engine, you need not worry that your website can be dropped from that Search Engine’s database.
Having underscored the unimportance of re-submitting, I’d still suggest monthly or bi-monthly re-submission of your website for the following reasons:
- Your website may be dropped if it’s unavailable for any reason for any length of time.
- If you make substantial changes to your website, it’s better to re-submit it for refreshing the focus of bots.
- Your website may be dropped without notification for indiscernible reason.
Summary: Though unnecessary, it’s always advisable to be safe than sorry. Re-submission will ensure that Search Engines don’t miss your website and keep their records current.