Verify & Submit Your Website to Search Engines (Google or Bing)

We've built in a straightforward way to verify the ownership of your website to major search engines.

When you submit your sitemap to Google or Bing and verify your website ownership to them, this allows you to access their various webmaster tools:

• Track how your website is performing in search.
• Discover which keywords your website is showing up for.
• Analyze your traffic data for each search engine.
• Find out about other websites that link back to yours.
• Get alerts for any broken links on your website.

Follow the simple steps below on submitting and verifying your site with the biggest search engines on the web.

Google

1. Navigate to Google Search Console.

2. It will ask you to login or create a Google account (email address ending in @gmail.com). After you login, you will be taken to the Google Search Console or it will ask you to navigate to it.

3. Here you have the option to 'select property type'. Please select "URL prefix" and copy and paste the URL of your website's home page, including the https://

4. You will be redirected to a page that lets you verify using alternate methods. Scroll down and select HTML tag to expand the menu.

5. Copy the code inside the quotation marks as seen below.

6. Without closing this window, go to your website dashboard in a new window or tab. Select the Settings icon in the gray navigation bar and then select SEO under the Settings header.

7. Paste the meta tag into the "Google site verification code" field box (right-click and then paste or CMD-V on Mac & CTRL-V on PC).

8. Refresh the page to parse out the actual code (CMD-R on Mac & CTRL-R on PC).

9. Select the green Publish button.

10. Return to the Google Search Console tab and select “Verify” on the screen where you copied the HTML code snippet. Your website ownership will now be verified for Google and you will have access to the full suite of Google Search Console tools.

11. From your Google Search Console dashboard, select Indexing > Sitemaps in the left-hand sidebar. 

12. In the box that says Add a new sitemap, you will notice your website’s URL with an empty text box following it. Type in “sitemap.xml” after the backslash (/).

13. Select Submit to finish.

Bing (which incorporates Yahoo!)

1. Go to Bing Webmaster Tools and click Sign up with Microsoft account (or just Sign In if you already have an email address from Microsoft ending in @hotmail.com or @live.com).
2. Follow the steps to create an account, then sign in to your account, which will lead you to a page called My Sites.
3. Click Add Your Site.
4. Type your liveBooks website’s URL into the URL field.
5. In the Add a sitemap field, type your URL, then “/sitemap.xml.” (For example:www.mywebsite.com/sitemap.xml)
6. Complete the rest of the form on the page and click Save.
7. On the next page, you can verify the ownership of your site. For a liveBooks website, you’ll use Option 2.  Copy the meta tag (the text in the gray box beginning “
8. Without closing this window, go to your liveBooks  dashboard in a new window or tab.
9. Click on the gear icon in the upper right hand corner of the page, which will take you into Settings.
10. Paste the tag into the field called Bing site verification code. Refresh the page, which will parse out the actual code.
11. Click Publish.
12. Go back to the Bing page. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click Verify.

Your website ownership is now verified by Bing and Yahoo! and you have access to Bing Webmaster Tools.