How to ping Google, Yahoo and Ask

By | December 17, 2008

Pinging is a way to inform Google, Yahoo and Ask of site updates.  Many webmaster forums are informing people that it is not possible to “ping” Google and other engines. They are wrong – it is. 

Pinging search engines is something often done after you have updated your XML sitemap. Before you can send XML sitemap ping update notifications to search engines such as Google, you will usually have to submit the XML sitemap to them first through your webmaster Google account. 

Having done that, all you need to do is go ping them. Here are the addresses to use: 

Ask.com: http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http://www.yoursite.com/sitemap.xml

Google: http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap=http://www.your site.com/sitemap.xml

Yahoo: http://search.yahooapis.com/SiteExplorerService/V1/updateNotification?appid=YahooDemo&url=http://www.yoursite.com/sitemap.xml

The Yahoo one can be a bit moody and doesn’t always work, but Google is your main one anyway, Yahoo is always second fiddle in any case. 

So ping occasionally, especially if you run a blog, keep link building and feel free to say “Thanks” in the comment box at the bottom.

2 thoughts on “How to ping Google, Yahoo and Ask

  1. John

    I could not get my site indexed until I used the information above. I hope that I will start seeing more hits now. Thanks

  2. Xell

    Thanks for the informative post.. Thanks. Finally my site indexed by google

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