1. Publish and check the file first
Find the sitemap produced by your CMS, or generate an XML file and publish it on your website. For a simple setup, place it at the site root. Open the exact final URL without logging in and check that it returns the intended XML rather than an error, redirect chain or security challenge.
Review canonical page URLs and remove accidental duplicates, broken entries or pages you intentionally exclude from search. If the entry point is a sitemap index, check that its referenced child files are also accessible.
https://example.com/sitemap.xml2. Submit the URL in Google Search Console
- Sign in to Search Console and select the verified property for the correct domain or URL prefix. Owner permission is required to submit through the Sitemaps report.
- Open Sitemaps. In Add a new sitemap, enter the sitemap address. If the interface already supplies a URL prefix, enter the remaining path. Verify the resulting full URL.
- Choose Submit and open the submitted row to inspect processing details. Success means the file was read, not that every page is indexed.
- If Google reports an error, expand its details and test the exact sitemap address using live URL inspection. Fix the cause before submitting again.
3. Submit it in Bing Webmaster Tools
- Sign in to Bing Webmaster Tools and select your verified website.
- Open the Sitemaps section and use its submission option to provide the full public sitemap URL.
- Review submission status, the last read date and any processing errors. Google and Bing maintain separate reports: a successful Google submission does not confirm Bing has processed the file.
4. Declare the sitemap in robots.txt
Add a Sitemap: line containing the absolute URL to the existing robots.txt file. Preserve the site’s current crawl rules; do not replace the whole file with this example. Google and Bing support discovery through this declaration.
Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xmlA robots.txt declaration does not create a submitted entry in Google’s Sitemaps report. Submit through Search Console as well when you want its processing history.
5. Maintain the sitemap after submission
Keep the published file current as pages are added, changed or removed. For large changes, or after fixing a persistent fetch failure, resubmit and check the next processing result. Repeated submissions are not an indexing shortcut.
The old Google sitemap ping endpoint is retired. Use Search Console or robots.txt. IndexNow can notify participating engines of individual URL changes, but it is a separate mechanism from sitemap submission.
If the file reads successfully but pages remain absent from search, inspect a sample of page URLs for canonical, noindex, access or content issues. Diagnose indexing separately from sitemap parsing.