Sitemap

Overview

What a sitemap does

• A sitemap is a map of a website’s pages that communicates the website’s structure to Google’s bots.
• Submitting it to Google informs Google about the website’s pages so its bot can collect information and display the website in Google Search.
• After a website is updated, submitting its sitemap can help Google display the updated information in search results.

Submitting an XML sitemap

• The XML sitemap can be submitted to Google Search Console from the RMP backend.

How to

Submitting the sitemap to Google

Submit the website’s sitemap:

• After completing the SEO settings and relevant webpage content.
• Again after enabling SSL on a website that already has a submitted sitemap.

1. Open the Sitemap section in Google Search Console.
2. Submit the XML sitemap.
3. Press Send to submit the sitemap and prompt Google to crawl the website again.

Updating Google verification before submitting the sitemap

1. Record the email address used for Google verification so it is available for sitemap submission after the website information changes.
2. Verify the website with the new email address and link that verification to the website before submitting the sitemap.

Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting sitemap submissions

• Enter the sitemap with the .xml suffix. A submission without this suffix is entered incorrectly and cannot be submitted successfully.
• A successful submission confirms only that the sitemap was sent. Google may crawl the updated data later, so wait for the subsequent report email.
• Google may need approximately one to two weeks to collect the results after the sitemap is submitted.

Policies and rules

Deleting sitemap entries or warnings

• Sitemap entries or warnings shown on the Google Search Console Sitemap page cannot be deleted.

Compiled from 16 facts observed across 8 customer calls.