After creating an XML sitemap for your web site, you can submit it to major search engines so that they will index the pages sooner and update the search listings for them more frequently. However, the procedure for submitting sitemaps varies significantly from one search engine to the next. Here are some details on how to submit your sitemap to four of the major search engines…

To submit your new sitemap to Microsoft’s Live Search, which provides results for both Live.com and MSN.com, first go to webmaster.live.com. Then click on the “Sign in to use the tools” button, and sign in (after registering, if necessary) with your Windows Live ID. A form titled “Add a website” will appear, where you can enter the addresses of your sitemap and homepage.

Submitting a sitemap to Yahoo is somewhat different. The easiest way to get to the correct page (which has already changed its URL at least once) is to go to Yahoo.com, then search for “submit sitemap”. Click the first result (”Yahoo! Site Explorer”) and scroll down to “Submit Site Feed.” The list below it shows that sitemaps are one type of “feed” which can be submitted using that form. You will have to log in, or register for a Yahoo account if you haven’t already.

Sitemaps can also be submitted to Google, if you register for an account there and log into Google Webmaster Tools. After logging in and reaching the “dashboard”, click the “sitemaps” tab on the menu at the left-hand side of the screen. Then click one of the two “Add Sitemap” links and select the appropriate map type from the next menu. The webmaster tools area can be accessed at google.com/webmasters/tools/.

You can submit your sitemap to Ask.com as well. According to their FAQ for webmasters, a “ping URL” may be used for this purpose. This URL is “http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=”, with the URL of your XML sitemap added to the end of it. An alternative option they suggest is to put the “auto-discovery directive” for sitemaps in your web site’s robots.txt file.

Other search engines, such as GigaBlast and ScrubTheWeb, don’t appear to offer any method to specifically submit a sitemap. However, you can still submit your web site’s home page to them. Still others (like Altavista and Lycos) get their results from other major search engines, so it isn’t necessary to submit anything to them separately.