Has Google spidered my site?

[J_Mac]

Just a few of weeks ago I took my site live but had not yet submited to Google as I was tweaking it here and there.

Well as of last week I noticed that it is already showing up in Google under some of my keywords. Does this mean that Google has already spidered my site? And if so should I still submit it or not?

If submitting it at this point could penalize me I would like to know. Any help is appreciated.

[marcs]

Check your logs to see if googlebot has visited that site.

If so, I personally would not submit it, while that probably would not cause any harm.

[onedumbear]

Googlebot must have found your site on it's own. You do not have to submit your site. You will not be penalized if you do.

[J_Mac]

What exactly do I look for in my logs when checking to see if Googlebot has shown up? I'm kind of new at this and still learning.

[the_nerd]

Check for something like this in your logfile

Googlebot/2.1+(+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)

- just search for "Googlebot" und you can step through the results.