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Technical SEO

What is a sitemap, and how do you submit it to Google?

An XML sitemap lists the URLs you want search engines to find. What to put in it, what to leave out, and how to submit it in Search Console and robots.txt.

A sitemap is a file, usually sitemap.xml, that lists the URLs on your site you want search engines to crawl. It helps them find pages faster, especially new pages and pages with few internal links. Include only canonical pages that return 200, reference it in robots.txt, and submit it in Google Search Console.

Published · Last updated

By Michal Měřínský. Audit methodology.

What a sitemap is

An XML sitemap is a machine-readable list of the pages on your site. Search engines read it to discover URLs they might not reach through links, and to notice which pages changed.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <url>
    <loc>https://example.com/pricing</loc>
    <lastmod>2026-11-02</lastmod>
  </url>
</urlset>

One file can hold up to 50,000 URLs or 50 MB uncompressed. Larger sites use a sitemap index that points to several sitemaps.

Do you need one?

Google says small, well-linked sites may not need a sitemap, but it rarely hurts. You benefit most if the site is new with few external links, if it is large, or if some pages are hard to reach through navigation. For a freshly launched product site, a sitemap is the quickest way to tell Google which pages exist.

What to include and what to leave out

  • Include the canonical URL of every page you want in search results.
  • Leave out redirects, 404s, pages marked noindex, duplicates and URLs with tracking parameters.
  • Use full absolute URLs with the protocol and the host you actually use.
  • Set lastmod only when a page's content really changed. Google ignores lastmod values it learns not to trust.

A sitemap is a hint, not a command. Listing a page does not guarantee it gets indexed, and leaving one out does not hide it.

How to submit it

  • Add a line to robots.txt so every crawler can find it:
Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml
  • In Google Search Console, open Sitemaps, enter the sitemap URL and submit. The report then shows how many URLs were discovered and any errors.
  • In Bing Webmaster Tools, submit the same URL. Bing also accepts IndexNow pings for faster updates. Most frameworks and site builders can generate the file. Check that yours updates when pages are added and that it lists your production domain, not a preview URL.

Common mistakes

  • A sitemap full of URLs that redirect or return 404, often left over from an old site.
  • Preview, staging or localhost URLs in the file.
  • Pages listed in the sitemap but blocked by robots.txt or marked noindex, which sends contradictory signals.
  • A sitemap served as an HTML page by a single-page app's catch-all route.
  • Never resubmitting after a domain change.

What a scan can and cannot tell you

WebAuditOS looks for sitemaps declared in robots.txt and at /sitemap.xml, follows redirects, and checks that the first one returning 200 contains a readable URL set or sitemap index. It also checks for robots.txt, for pages accidentally marked noindex, and for crawled pages that return errors.

It does not verify that every URL in your sitemap returns 200 or is canonical, and it cannot see what Google did with the sitemap. Search Console's Sitemaps and Page indexing reports show that.

A valid sitemap that lists the wrong pages passes every format check. Read the URLs in it at least once.

Short answers

Where should my sitemap be? Usually at /sitemap.xml, declared in robots.txt.

How often should I submit it? Once. Resubmit only if the location changes. Google rereads it on its own.

Does a sitemap get my pages indexed? It helps Google find them. Indexing still depends on the pages themselves.

Should images and videos be in it? Optional. Image and video sitemap extensions help media-heavy sites.

In the product

The checks this maps to

Every check named here runs on every scan, on every plan - what a plan changes is how many pages are crawled, how long the history is kept and what you can do with the result. These are the ids the findings carry, so you can match a line in a report to the explanation above.

Technical SEO

What is robots.txt, and what should it contain?

robots.txt tells crawlers which paths they may fetch. What a safe file looks like, why it cannot hide pages from Google, and the line that blocks everything.

Technical SEO

What is Google Search Console, and how do you use it?

Search Console is Google's free tool for seeing how your site performs in search. How to set it up, the reports that matter, and what it cannot tell you.