Submit Sitemap to Google

According to Wikipedia, “A site map (or sitemap) is a list of pages of a web site accessible to crawlers or users. It can be either a document in any form used as a planning tool for web design, or a web page that lists the pages on a web site, typically organized in hierarchical fashion. This helps visitors and search engine bots find pages on the site.”

When you publish a post, it may take days or even more than a week for it to be crawled by Google bots. Submitting your sitemap to Google gets every page of your blog be indexed by Google more promptly than usual. And thus, lets your pages be returned on Google search results page resulting to an increased traffic.

1. Go to Google Webmaster Central then sign in to Webmaster Tools.

2. On the homepage, click on “Add a Site” button. Below is how the homepage looks like.

Upon clicking “Add a Site”, a box will prompt where you need to enter the complete URL of your site. Enter your site URL then click Continue. At this point, Google will try to verify the ownership of your site and may give you instructions on how to do so.

3. Go to the Dashboard page of the site you have added in Webmaster Tools by clicking on its name. Somewhere on that page, look for the Sitemaps section then click on “Submit a Sitemap” link.

4. On the Sitemaps page, click on “Submit a Sitemap” button.


5. Enter either “atom.xml” or “rss.xml” on the box that will prompt. In the case of this blog, the result is this:

Then click “Submit Sitemap located at the right of URL.

At this point, you will see that your index submission is on Pending status.


Once your sitemap has been processed, go back to the Sitemaps page of your site in Webmasters Tool to verify if your pages are indexed accordingly.

Click here for instructions on how to submit your sitemap to Yahoo!.