Understanding how to submit a sitemap to google gives Google a direct, structured list of the pages you consider important, which speeds up discovery and makes indexing problems easier to diagnose. Google can and does find pages without a sitemap, by following links and crawling on its own schedule — but a submitted sitemap acts as a shortcut, especially for large sites, new sites with few inbound links, or sites that recently restructured their URLs. This guide covers finding or generating your sitemap, submitting it correctly through Search Console, reading the results, and fixing the errors that show up most often.
What a Sitemap Actually Is
An XML sitemap is a file — typically at a URL like https://example.com/sitemap.xml — that lists the URLs on your site you want search engines to know about, sometimes with metadata like last-modified date or priority. It’s not a guarantee that Google will index every URL listed (that depends on content quality, crawl budget, and indexing decisions Google makes independently), but it is a reliable way to make sure Google at least knows those URLs exist and is invited to crawl them.
Step 1: Find or Generate Your Sitemap
Before you can submit anything, you need a sitemap URL. Where this comes from depends on your platform:
| Platform | Typical sitemap location | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| WordPress (Yoast, RankMath, or similar SEO plugin) | /sitemap_index.xml or /sitemap.xml |
Generated and updated automatically by the plugin |
| Shopify | /sitemap.xml |
Auto-generated, cannot be manually edited |
| Wix | /sitemap.xml |
Auto-generated once the site is published |
| Squarespace | /sitemap.xml |
Auto-generated, updates as pages are published |
| Custom-built site | Varies — often /sitemap.xml |
May need to be generated manually or via a build script |
If you’re not sure whether your site has one, try navigating directly to yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml in a browser. If nothing loads, check yourdomain.com/robots.txt — most sitemaps are also referenced there with a line like Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml, which is worth adding regardless of whether you submit through Search Console, since it helps other crawlers (Bing, etc.) find it too.
Step 2: Open the Sitemaps Report in Search Console
Log into Search Console, select the correct property from the dropdown in the top-left, then find “Sitemaps” under the Indexing section in the left-hand navigation menu.
Step 3: Enter the Sitemap Path and Submit
- In the “Add a new sitemap” field, enter only the path relative to your property’s root — for example, just
sitemap.xml, not the full URL, since Search Console prepends your domain automatically. - Click Submit.
- Search Console will queue the sitemap for processing. This isn’t instant — it can take anywhere from a few minutes to a day or two before status updates.
- Refresh the report later to see the status change from “Pending” or “Couldn’t fetch” to “Success,” along with the number of discovered URLs.
Step 4: Confirm It Was Processed Successfully
A successful submission shows a green “Success” status with the date it was last read and how many URLs were discovered within it. Clicking into the sitemap entry shows more detail, including whether any of the listed URLs had issues. Note that “discovered” doesn’t mean “indexed” — discovery just means Google read the URL from your sitemap; indexing is a separate decision Google makes based on the page’s content and quality, visible instead in the Pages report under Indexing.
Common Sitemap Submission Errors and Fixes
| Error | Likely cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Couldn’t fetch | Sitemap URL is wrong, blocked by robots.txt, or the server returned an error when Google tried to access it | Verify the URL loads directly in a browser and isn’t disallowed in robots.txt |
| Sitemap is HTML | The URL entered points to a normal webpage, not an XML file | Confirm the sitemap URL actually returns XML content, not a 404 page styled as HTML |
| General HTTP error | Server returned a non-200 status code (403, 404, 500) when fetching the sitemap | Check server logs or hosting configuration; confirm the file exists and is publicly accessible |
| URLs not allowed | Sitemap contains URLs from a different domain or subdomain than the property | Only include URLs that belong to the exact property (or, for Domain properties, any subdomain of it) |
| Sitemap too large | Exceeds 50,000 URLs or 50MB uncompressed | Split into multiple sitemap files and submit a sitemap index file listing all of them |
Do You Need to Resubmit After Every Update?
No. Once a sitemap is submitted and successfully processed, Google periodically re-crawls it on its own to pick up new or changed URLs, especially if your sitemap includes accurate last-modified dates. You generally only need to manually resubmit if you’ve changed the sitemap’s URL or filename, or if you want to nudge Google to re-check it sooner after a major site restructuring.
Multiple Sitemaps and Sitemap Index Files
Larger sites often split content into separate sitemaps — one for blog posts, one for product pages, one for category pages — and reference all of them from a single sitemap index file. You can submit either the index file or individual sitemaps directly to Search Console; submitting the index is usually simpler since it covers everything in one entry, and the Sitemaps report will show each child sitemap’s status when you expand it.
What Sitemap Submission Does Not Do
It’s worth being clear-eyed about the limits here. Submitting a sitemap does not guarantee indexing, does not improve rankings directly, and does not fix underlying quality or crawlability problems — it simply tells Google where to look. If pages listed in your sitemap aren’t getting indexed, the more useful diagnostic is the Pages report under Indexing, which shows the specific reason Google excluded each URL (duplicate content, noindex tag, crawled but not indexed, and so on).
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need a sitemap if my site is small?
Not strictly, but it doesn’t hurt. For a small site with clean internal linking, Google will likely find every page anyway, but a sitemap still provides useful confirmation and metadata at no cost.
Can I submit more than one sitemap per property?
Yes, there’s no limit on how many you can submit, which is why larger sites split content into multiple sitemaps organized by type.
Why does my sitemap show fewer indexed pages than URLs listed?
This is normal and common — the sitemap count reflects discovery, not indexing. Check the Pages report for the specific reason each unindexed URL was excluded.
Should I include noindexed pages in my sitemap?
No. Sitemaps should only list canonical URLs you actually want indexed; including noindexed or redirected URLs sends mixed signals and wastes crawl attention.
Once your sitemap is submitted and Google is crawling your site as expected, the next question is usually what to do with all the resulting performance data. SEO Rocket connects to your Search Console account and pairs it with real Ahrefs data so you can see indexing, rankings, and content opportunities together. Try it free at app.seorocket.ai.
