How to Submit a Sitemap to Google Search Console

Before You Submit

Check three things first:

1. The sitemap is live. Open https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml in a browser. You should see XML, not an error page or a login screen.
2. It's on the same site you'll submit it to. A sitemap for https://www.example.com belongs in that property. A Domain property covers all subdomains and protocols.
3. It contains the URLs you want indexed: canonical, returning 200, not noindex. XML sitemap best practices has a checklist.

If you don't have a sitemap yet, start with how to create an XML sitemap.

Step 1: Verify Your Site in Search Console

If you haven't already, add your site at search.google.com/search-console:

• Domain property (recommended): verified with a DNS TXT record at your domain registrar or DNS host. Covers http, https, www and all subdomains.
• URL-prefix property: covers one exact prefix, such as https://www.example.com/, and can be verified by HTML file, meta tag, Google Analytics or Tag Manager.

Step 2: Add the Sitemap

1. Select the property.
2. Open Sitemaps under Indexing in the left menu.
3. Type the sitemap's path after your domain, for example sitemap.xml, or sitemap_index.xml for an index file.
4. Click Submit.

For a sitemap index, submit just the index; Google reads the sitemaps it lists.

Step 3: Read the Sitemaps Report

After submitting, the report lists each sitemap with:

Success means Google could read the file. It doesn't mean every URL is indexed. Couldn't fetch means Google couldn't retrieve or parse the file at that moment; it can also appear briefly for a newly submitted sitemap. Our guide to the sitemap "Couldn't fetch" error goes through the causes.

Step 4: Check Which URLs Are Indexed

Click a sitemap in the report, then See page indexing. This filters the Page indexing report to the URLs in that sitemap, showing which are indexed and why others aren't, for example:

• Discovered – currently not indexed: Google knows the URL but hasn't crawled it yet.
• Crawled – currently not indexed: crawled, but Google chose not to index it for now.
• Duplicate without user-selected canonical or Alternate page with proper canonical tag: Google picked another URL as canonical.
• Excluded by 'noindex' tag or Page with redirect: these shouldn't be in your sitemap at all.

New sites often see many URLs in "Discovered" for a while. Improving internal links and content quality matters more than resubmitting.

Also Tell Other Search Engines

• robots.txt: add Sitemap: https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml. Any crawler that reads robots.txt can find it.
• Bing Webmaster Tools: add the site (you can import from Search Console) and submit the sitemap. Bing's index is also used by some other search services.

Google retired its old sitemap "ping" URL in 2023, so pinging is no longer a way to notify Google. Use Search Console and robots.txt instead.

Do You Need to Resubmit After Changes?

Usually not. Google re-reads submitted sitemaps periodically, and an accurate <lastmod> helps it notice updates. Resubmitting is useful when you've moved the sitemap to a new URL or fixed an error and want Google to fetch it again sooner.

If You Need a Sitemap File

If your platform doesn't generate one, the XML sitemap generator can crawl your public site (up to 1,000 pages per crawl) or build a sitemap from pasted URLs, then gives you a standards-compliant sitemap.xml to upload to your site's root and submit.

Summary

Verify the site, submit the sitemap URL under Indexing → Sitemaps, and use the Page indexing view to see what Google actually indexed. Add a robots.txt line and submit to Bing as well.