In some ways, introducing your site to Google is a bit like introducing yourself to someone you meet in real life.
At its simplest, you just say something similar to "Hello, my name is..
..
".
The main difference is that Google isn't a real person (even though we tend to give the search engine a personality) but the principles are remarkably similar.
1.
Register your domain name If the site is your own, you will need a domain name.
Google keeps a watchful eye on all new domain registrations and will almost certainly poke around your site soon as you register your domain name and at regular intervals after that.
So unless you've taken steps to ask Google not to index your site until you're ready, there's an exceptionally good chance that it will find you and essentially do the "introduction thing" itself.
2.
Put some content on your site This applies whether you're using your own domain name or piggy backing on another site such as Blogger or Squidoo or any of the other myriad of free hosting sites.
Again, since Google has an almost insatiable appetite for new content, this may be sufficient to let it know that there is some new content to add to its already bloated index.
3.
Ping your page If you're using WordPress to take care of the technical side of your site creation, this will happen as part of the process of pressing the "Publish" button.
Pinging is a bit like waving a flag or holding umbrella so that tourists can follow you.
It's a way of notifying various services on the web that you've added new content to your site.
In turn, these services are regularly tracked by the search engines in their thirst for new pages to index.
If you're not using WordPress then there are services such as Pingomatic where you simply enter the URL of the page and its title and they will go off and ping your page to all the right places.
4.
Tweet about it Sites like Twitter are being used as sources of information by Google.
So if you've got an account with Twitter, put up a short tweet about your page including the URL and you'll get introduced to Google via Twitter's service.
5.
Bookmark it - but not on your PC's Favorites list The search engines don't normally pay any attention to whether or not you store a site in your Favorites on your own computer.
But they do look at public bookmark lists - sites where you can store your favorite sites so that you can find them, even if you're not using your regular computer.
These lists are crawled reasonably regularly and used as yet another source of possible content to index.
6.
Digg or Stumble it Sites like Digg and StumbleUpon are still capable of generating traffic to your site.
So Google still takes notice of them.
If your content is interesting enough (check out the main pages of the sites you're interested in to see whether this is likely) then it's worth using these sites to effectively announce your new content to Google and the world.
But be sparing on these sites as other users will vote on your site depending on whether they think it's worth visiting or not.
7.
If you're a conspiracy theorist, send an email to a Gmail user A lot of people think this works.
I've not tested it myself but it does sound plausible and isn't exactly difficult.
Gmail automatically scans emails to show you relevant adverts.
It's a logical next step to think that they will pick up any URLs in these emails and - if they don't already know about them - add them to their list of sites to visit.
I've not read whether this is true or not but it's quick and easy to do.
If you follow even a handful of these simple tips, you should find that your site gets introduced to Google in record time.