To submit a sitemap to Google, open Google Search Console, choose your property, go to Indexing → Sitemaps, type the sitemap's address into "Add a new sitemap" and click Submit. Also add a Sitemap: line to your robots.txt, so Bing and every other crawler find it without an account. You submit once; Google then rereads the file on its own schedule. This guide walks through each step, from verifying the site to reading the status afterwards. For what a sitemap is and what belongs in it, see the XML sitemap guide.
Quick answer
- Have a sitemap first. Find its address in robots.txt or at
/sitemap.xml,/sitemap_index.xmlor/wp-sitemap.xml, and check that it answers 200 with XML. - Verify the site in Google Search Console. A Domain property covers every subdomain and protocol.
- Submit it: Indexing → Sitemaps → enter the address → Submit. For a sitemap index, submit only the index.
- Declare it in robots.txt:
Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xmlon its own line. - Add it to Bing Webmaster Tools too, or import your sites from Search Console there.
- Do not resubmit after every update. Google rereads submitted sitemaps itself, and the old ping URL stopped working at the end of 2023.
- Validate before you submit with the sitemap checker.
Before you submit: check the sitemap
Submitting a broken file only gets you an error a day later. Two minutes of checking first:
- Find the address. Your CMS usually decides it:
/wp-sitemap.xmlfor WordPress core,/sitemap_index.xmlfor Yoast SEO and Rank Math,/sitemap.xmlfor Shopify, Wix, Squarespace and most others. How to find a website's sitemap covers the rest. - Open it in a browser. It should show XML, not your home page, a login screen or a 404.
- Validate it. Run it through the sitemap checker below; it confirms the XML parses, the URLs are absolute and on your host, and a sample of listed pages answer 200.
If you have no sitemap yet, create one first.
Step 1: verify your site in Google Search Console
Search Console only accepts sitemaps for sites you have proved you own. At search.google.com/search-console, add a property. You have two choices:
| Property type | Covers | How you verify |
|---|---|---|
Domain (example.com) | Every subdomain and both http and https | A DNS TXT record at your domain registrar or DNS host |
URL prefix (https://www.example.com/) | Only URLs that start with that exact prefix | An HTML file, a meta tag, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager or DNS |
A Domain property is the better default: it keeps working when you change between www and the bare domain, and it can take sitemaps for any subdomain. With a URL-prefix property, the sitemap must sit inside the prefix, so https://www.example.com/ cannot take a sitemap at https://example.com/sitemap.xml.
DNS changes can take from minutes to a day to show; Search Console tells you when verification succeeds.
Step 2: submit the sitemap in Search Console
- In Search Console, select the property.
- In the left menu, open Indexing → Sitemaps.
- Under Add a new sitemap, enter the sitemap's address. For a URL-prefix property the field already shows the site address, and you type the path, such as
sitemap.xml; for a Domain property, enter the full URL. - Click Submit.
A dialog confirms the submission, and the sitemap appears in the Submitted sitemaps table below.
One index, not every file. If your sitemap is an index, as with WordPress, Yoast, Rank Math and Shopify, submit only the index. Google reads the child sitemaps from it, and Search Console lists them when you open the index's row. Google allows up to 500 sitemap index files per site in Search Console, which no ordinary site comes close to.
Several sections, several sitemaps. If you run separate sitemaps that are not joined in an index, such as a shop on one platform and a blog on another, submit each one.
Step 3: declare the sitemap in robots.txt
Search Console only tells Google. A line in robots.txt tells every crawler that reads the file, Google and Bing included, with no account:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /cart/
Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xmlThe rules for the line:
- Use the full URL, with
https://and the host. - It can go anywhere in the file; it does not belong to a
User-agentgroup. - Add one line per sitemap, or one line for the index.
WordPress core, Yoast SEO, Rank Math and Shopify add the line to their generated robots.txt for you. If you maintain a physical robots.txt, add it yourself. The robots.txt guide covers the rest of the file, and the robots.txt tester checks it.
Step 4: submit the sitemap to Bing
Bing Webmaster Tools powers results in Bing and in several services built on its index. At bing.com/webmasters, add your site, or choose Import to bring your verified sites over from Google Search Console in one step. Then open Sitemaps, click Submit sitemap, enter the address and submit.
Bing ended anonymous sitemap submission by URL in May 2022, so Webmaster Tools and robots.txt are the ways that remain. Bing also supports IndexNow, a protocol for announcing individual changed URLs the moment they change; several SEO plugins and CDNs can send it for you. Google does not use IndexNow.
What Search Console shows after you submit
The Submitted sitemaps table shows, for each sitemap:
| Column | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Type | Sitemap or sitemap index |
| Submitted | When you submitted it |
| Last read | When Google last downloaded it |
| Status | Success, Has errors or Couldn't fetch |
| Discovered pages | How many URLs Google found in it |
| Discovered videos | How many videos, when the file has video entries |
What the statuses mean:
- Success. Google read and parsed the file. It does not mean the pages are indexed; click the row and choose See page indexing to see which listed pages are indexed and why others are not.
- Has errors. Google read the file but found problems, such as invalid dates, URLs on another host or unsupported tags. Click the row for details.
- Couldn't fetch. Google could not download the file, or has not processed it yet. Right after a first submission this status often just means "pending"; wait a day or two before debugging. If it stays, the address may answer an error, a login page, HTML instead of XML, or be blocked in robots.txt or by a firewall.
Every error message, its cause and the fix are listed in XML sitemap validation.
After submitting: what not to do
- Do not resubmit on every update. Google rereads submitted sitemaps on its own schedule and uses accurate
<lastmod>dates to spot changed pages. Resubmitting does no harm, but it does not make Google come back faster. Sitemap lastmod explains how to make those dates count. - Do not rely on pinging. Google retired its sitemap ping endpoint at the end of 2023, announced in the Search Central post "Sitemaps ping endpoint is going away" in June 2023; requests to it now return 404. Plugins that still ping achieve nothing.
- Do not expect instant indexing. A sitemap is a hint for discovery. Google decides whether and when to crawl and index each page. If specific pages stay out, why is my page not in Google goes through the causes in order.
- Do not leave old sitemaps in the report. After switching SEO plugins or platforms, open the old sitemap's row and choose Remove sitemap, and make the old address answer 404 or redirect to the new one.
Platform notes
WordPress. Submit /wp-sitemap.xml without an SEO plugin, or /sitemap_index.xml with Yoast SEO or Rank Math; never both. The WordPress sitemap guide explains which one you have.
Shopify. Submit https://yourdomain/sitemap.xml for your primary domain. Stores with separate international domains submit each domain's sitemap. Shopify's sitemap has the details.
Wix and Squarespace. Both generate /sitemap.xml. Wix can also connect the site to Search Console from its SEO settings, which verifies the site and submits the sitemap for you.
Multilingual sites on subdomains. A Domain property can take the sitemap of every language subdomain; with URL-prefix properties, verify and submit each one.
How to verify it worked
- The sitemap's row shows Success and a Last read date within a few days.
- Discovered pages roughly matches the number of pages you expect. A much lower number means the index or a child file is missing; a much higher one means the sitemap lists URLs you did not intend.
- Page indexing filtered to the sitemap shows most listed pages as indexed after a few weeks. Pages marked "Crawled – currently not indexed" or "Discovered – currently not indexed" are a page-quality or crawl question, not a sitemap one.
Questions people ask
Do I need to resubmit my sitemap after adding new pages?
No. Once submitted, Google rereads your sitemap on its own schedule and finds the new URLs there, as long as your CMS updates the file. Accurate <lastmod> dates help it notice changed pages. You can resubmit, and it does no harm, but it does not speed things up. For one urgent page, use URL Inspection in Search Console and request indexing.
How long does Google take to read a submitted sitemap?
Usually within a few days, though Google gives no fixed time and busy sites are read more often. Right after a first submission, Search Console may show "Couldn't fetch" while the file waits to be processed. If the Last read date stays empty for more than a week, check that the file answers 200 with XML to Googlebot.
Can I submit a sitemap to Google without Search Console?
Yes, by adding a Sitemap: line with the full URL to your robots.txt; Google reads it the next time it fetches robots.txt. What you lose without Search Console are the reports: when Google last read the file, its errors, and which listed pages are indexed. The old anonymous ping URL no longer works.
Should I submit my sitemap to Bing as well?
Yes, it takes two minutes. Bing Webmaster Tools can import your verified sites from Google Search Console, and a submitted sitemap gives you Bing's own crawl and indexing reports. Bing results also feed other services built on its index. The Sitemap: line in robots.txt reaches Bing too, but submitting gives you the reports.