How to submit a sitemap to Google Search Console (and Bing)
Submit your sitemap in Search Console's Sitemaps report, list it in robots.txt and add it to Bing Webmaster Tools. Include only canonical 200 URLs.
LLaunchScaler·Published ·7 min read
To submit a sitemap to Google, open your property in Search Console, click Sitemaps under Indexing, enter the sitemap's address in the "Add a new sitemap" box and click Submit. Then add a Sitemap: https://yoursite.com/sitemap.xml line to robots.txt so every crawler can find it, and add the same file to Bing Webmaster Tools, where IndexNow covers the pages that change.
Submission only tells search engines where the file is. What decides whether it helps is what the file contains, which is covered after the steps.
How do you submit a sitemap in Google Search Console?
Put the sitemap live on your site, confirm Google can fetch it, then register its URL in the Sitemaps report. Google's help is explicit that "you cannot actually upload a sitemap to Google": submitting means "telling Google where to find the file on your site." You need owner permissions on the property to use the report.
Publish the sitemap, ideally at the site root, for example https://example.com/sitemap.xml. Google says a sitemap at the root "can affect all files on the site," while one in a folder only covers that folder unless you submit it in Search Console.
Test that Google can fetch it: paste the sitemap URL into URL Inspection, click Test live URL, and check that Page fetch is Successful. The help says the file "must be accessible to Googlebot and must not be blocked by any login requirements."
Open the Sitemaps report from the left menu, under Indexing.
Enter the sitemap URL in the "Add a new sitemap" box. The box shows your property's address, so for a URL-prefix property you type the rest of the path, such as sitemap.xml.
Click Submit. Google says "the sitemap should be fetched immediately," although crawling the URLs in it "can take some time."
Read the status column. Success means the file was fetched and processed; Couldn't fetch or Has errors means you have work to do. The sitemap could not be read guide covers every fetch and parse error.
If you do not have owner permissions, Google says "you can list the sitemap in your robots.txt file instead." The Search Console Sitemaps API offers the same functions for scripted submissions. If you are starting from scratch, the covers verifying the property first.
Questions, answered
What people ask about this
01
How do I submit a sitemap to Google Search Console?
Open your property in Search Console, click Sitemaps in the left menu under Indexing, enter the sitemap's URL in the Add a new sitemap box and click Submit. You need owner permissions on the property to submit through the report.
Not always. Google's help says a site of "about 500 pages or fewer" where "you can reach any page on your site by following one or more links from your homepage" probably doesn't need a sitemap or the report, and that hosted platforms such as Squarespace or Wix "probably manage your sitemap for you." Larger sites, new sites and sites with deep pages benefit most.
Google's sitemap overview names the cases where a sitemap helps: a large site, a new site with few external links, and a site with rich media or news content. Even where it is optional, submitting through the report has one practical benefit: it is the only place Google shows you fetch and parsing errors for that file. The report "shows only sitemaps that were submitted using this report or the API," not ones Google found through robots.txt.
How do you add the sitemap to robots.txt?
Add one line with the sitemap's full URL, anywhere in the file. Google's robots.txt specification says the value must be "a fully qualified URL, including the protocol and host," and that Google "will find it the next time we crawl your robots.txt file." This line reaches Bing and other crawlers without a separate account.
The URL must be absolute. Sitemap: /sitemap.xml does not qualify.
"You can specify multiple sitemap lines, and there's no limit to the number of sitemaps you can include in your robots.txt file."
The field "isn't tied to any specific user agent and may be followed by all crawlers," so it works whatever groups the file has.
Robots.txt must not block the sitemap itself. Google respects robots.txt when fetching sitemaps.
Does resubmitting or pinging speed up crawling?
No. Google says "submitting a sitemap is merely a hint: it doesn't guarantee that Google will download the sitemap or use the sitemap for crawling URLs on the site." Its crawling guide lists "submitting the same, unchanged sitemap multiple times per day" among the things to avoid. Once a sitemap is read, Google recrawls it "at a pace unrelated to the regular site crawl."
The old ping shortcut is gone too. In June 2023 Google announced it was "deprecating our support for sitemaps ping and the endpoint will stop functioning in 6 months," after which requests "to the deprecated REST endpoint will result in a 404 error." Its reason: "the vast majority of the submissions lead to spam." Plugins still calling it cause no harm, but they do nothing.
What does help:
Resubmit only after big changes. Google's help: "If you make big changes to a sitemap, you might want to resubmit." Otherwise, "let Google follow its regular crawling schedule."
Keep <lastmod> accurate. Google uses it "as a signal for scheduling crawls" when it is "consistently and verifiably" accurate. The sitemap lastmod guide covers the format and when to update it.
For a handful of important new pages, use Request indexing in URL Inspection.
How do you submit a sitemap to Bing?
Add your site to Bing Webmaster Tools, then submit the sitemap on its Sitemaps page, or import both site and sitemaps from Google Search Console. Bing's help says its Sitemaps page lists the sitemaps "submitted by the users, those imported from Google Search Console and the ones that were discovered organically by Bing," including through robots.txt.
Sign in to Bing Webmaster Tools and add your site. The quickest route is "Import sites from Google Search Console," which Bing says imports your verified sites "along with the Sitemaps" and verifies them automatically. Up to 100 sites can be imported at once.
To add a sitemap by hand, open Sitemaps and click the "Submit sitemaps" button at the top right.
Check the processing status and URL count in the sitemap table, and click an entry for its errors.
Resubmit an individual sitemap from its row when it changes significantly. Bing does not allow resubmitting several at once.
Bing also re-checks linked Search Console accounts periodically, and "any new sitemap found on your Search Console account will also be imported automatically." The Bing indexing guide covers the rest of getting a site into Bing.
What is IndexNow, and does Google use it?
IndexNow is a protocol for telling search engines a specific URL was added, updated or deleted, the moment it happens. You host a key file on your site and send the URL to one participating endpoint, which shares it with the others. The listed participants include Bing, Yandex, Naver, Seznam.cz, Yep and Amazon. Google is not on that list.
A single URL is one GET request; a batch is a POST of up to 10,000 URLs:
The key must be 8 to 128 characters of letters, numbers and dashes, and you prove ownership by hosting it as https://example.com/your-key.txt. The IndexNow docs say a 200 response "only indicates that the search engine has received your URL," and its FAQ says "each engine makes its own decision about whether to index it." Use IndexNow alongside the sitemap, not instead of it.
What should the sitemap contain?
Only the canonical URLs you want in search, each returning 200 and allowed to be indexed. Google's guidance: "Include the URLs in your sitemap that you want to see in Google's search results." A sitemap full of redirects, 404s, noindexed pages and parameter variants tells Google you are not tracking your own site, and it wastes the crawl on pages you do not want indexed.
Include
Leave out
The canonical URL of each page, absolute, with your chosen protocol and host
Redirecting URLs, including http:// and the host you do not use
Pages that return 200
Pages that return 404, 410 or 5xx
Pages with no noindex rule
Noindexed pages and pages blocked in robots.txt
One URL per piece of content
Sort, filter, tracking and session parameter variants
An accurate <lastmod> per URL
<priority> and <changefreq>, which Google ignores
Limits: 50,000 URLs or 50 MB uncompressed per file, UTF-8 encoded, URLs fully qualified. The order of URLs "doesn't matter to Google." If you use WordPress, Wix or Blogger, Google says "it's likely that your CMS has already made a sitemap available to search engines," so check its documentation before building your own.
Check your sitemap before you submit it
To confirm the file is discoverable and clean before you register it, run the free scan on LaunchScaler. Give it your URL, no account needed, and it runs 156 checks across 6 of its 7 categories at no cost. Its sitemap checks flag a sitemap missing from /sitemap.xml and from a robots.txt Sitemap: line, a file over the 50,000-URL or 50 MB limit, entries that redirect, return 404, are noindexed or are not canonical, and lastmod dates that are missing or never change. Fix what it reports, then submit the sitemap in Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
Not always. Google says a site of about 500 pages or fewer, where every page can be reached by links from the homepage, probably doesn't need a sitemap, and hosted platforms often manage one for you. Submitting through Search Console lets you see fetch errors.
03
Does resubmitting a sitemap make Google crawl faster?
No. Google says submitting a sitemap is merely a hint and asks you not to submit the same, unchanged sitemap multiple times a day. Resubmit only after big changes, and keep lastmod dates accurate instead.
04
Can I still ping Google with my sitemap?
No. Google deprecated the sitemaps ping endpoint in June 2023 and said it would stop working six months later, after which requests return 404. Use Search Console, the Search Console API or a Sitemap line in robots.txt.
05
How do I submit a sitemap to Bing?
In Bing Webmaster Tools, open Sitemaps and click Submit sitemaps, or import your sites and sitemaps from Google Search Console. For individual changed URLs, Bing supports IndexNow.
'URL is not on Google' means the page can't appear in Search. The Page indexing lines below it name the blocker: discovery, crawl, noindex or canonical.
