Submitting your WordPress sitemap to Google Search Console gives Google a clear list of the URLs your website makes available for crawling. It also lets you monitor whether Google can fetch the XML sitemap and how many URLs it has discovered from it.
CrawlWP uses the WordPress sitemap system and adds its supported sitemap types to the main sitemap index. For most sites, you only need to submit the main sitemap index rather than submitting every individual sitemap.
Before You Submit Your WordPress Sitemap
- Verify your website in Google Search Console. Your site must already be added and verified. If you have not completed this step, follow Verify with Google Search Console.
- Make sure your sitemap is accessible. In WordPress, go to CrawlWP > Settings, open Sitemap in the left-hand menu, and click Open Sitemap. The sitemap should load normally in your browser.
If the sitemap does not open, fix that problem before submitting it to Search Console. See Understanding CrawlWP sitemaps for help with common sitemap problems.
Submit the CrawlWP Sitemap to Google
- Sign in to Google Search Console and select the property for your website.
- Click Sitemaps in the left-hand menu.
- Under Add a new sitemap, enter
wp-sitemap.xmlafter your site’s domain. - Click Submit.
Google will attempt to fetch the sitemap and add it to the Submitted sitemaps section. Once Google has successfully processed it, the status will show Success.
The first fetch does not necessarily happen immediately. Give Google some time to process the submission before treating a temporary fetch status as a permanent problem.
Submit the Sitemap Index, Not Every Sitemap
The address you should normally submit is:
https://your-site.com/wp-sitemap.xml
This file is a sitemap index. It points to the individual sitemaps generated for different types of content on your site, such as posts, pages, categories, authors, and other public content.
It can also include additional CrawlWP sitemap types when you have enabled them, such as the Google News sitemap, video sitemap, and custom URLs sitemap. Because those sitemaps are linked from the index, you normally do not need to add each one separately in Search Console.
What Sitemap Submission Actually Does
A sitemap helps Google discover URLs that you want it to crawl. Submitting one is not a request to index every URL in the file, and it does not guarantee that every page will appear in Google search results.
Google still evaluates individual pages and decides whether and when to crawl or index them. A URL can therefore be present in your sitemap without appearing in search results.
You generally only need to submit your sitemap once. Google can revisit the sitemap and discover newly published or changed URLs without requiring you to resubmit it every time your content changes.
Help Google Discover New or Updated Pages Faster
A sitemap is useful for discovery, but it is not the same as requesting an immediate crawl of a specific URL. When you need to notify search engines about newly published or updated content, CrawlWP also provides instant indexing features.
See Setting Up Search Engine Indexing for WordPress for information about configuring search engine indexing in CrawlWP.
Submit Your Sitemap to Other Search Engines
Google Search Console is not the only place where you can submit a sitemap. Bing Webmaster Tools and Yandex Webmaster provide their own sitemap submission interfaces, where you can submit the same main sitemap URL.
Your site’s robots.txt file can also contain a Sitemap: directive pointing to the sitemap. This gives crawlers another way to discover the sitemap without requiring a manual submission through a webmaster platform.
Check Your Sitemap in Search Console
After submitting the sitemap, use the Sitemaps section in Search Console to monitor its processing status. A successful submission means Google could fetch the sitemap; it does not mean every URL inside it has been indexed.
When reviewing the numbers reported by Search Console, distinguish between URLs discovered through the sitemap and URLs that Google has actually indexed. These figures can be different, and that is not necessarily a sitemap problem.
Troubleshooting Sitemap Submission
Search Console says “Couldn’t fetch”
Open your sitemap URL in a private browser window and make sure it loads normally. If it does not, investigate the sitemap or server problem first. See Understanding CrawlWP sitemaps.
If the sitemap opens correctly, a temporary Couldn’t fetch status does not always mean the sitemap is broken. Google may report this status before it completes a successful fetch, so check the submission again later.
Search Console reports sitemap errors
Open https://your-site.com/wp-sitemap.xml directly and confirm that it displays the sitemap index rather than an error page. If a security plugin, firewall, maintenance mode, or hosting rule interferes with XML requests, Google may be unable to read the file even though WordPress is working normally.
The number of discovered URLs is lower than expected
Search Console reports what Google discovered from the sitemap; it does not mean that the same number of URLs have been indexed. Also check your CrawlWP search appearance and indexing settings, because content intentionally hidden from search results is excluded from the sitemap.
See Choosing what appears in your sitemap for more information about controlling sitemap content.
You previously submitted a sitemap from another SEO plugin
If you switched to CrawlWP from another SEO plugin, review the entries under Submitted sitemaps in Search Console. Remove old sitemap submissions that are no longer used and submit wp-sitemap.xml as your site’s current sitemap index.
Use the Main Sitemap URL Going Forward
Once wp-sitemap.xml has been submitted successfully on Google Search Console, there is normally no reason to manually submit another sitemap every time you publish a post or page.
CrawlWP and WordPress update the sitemap structure as your site’s content and sitemap settings change, while Google can revisit the index to discover those changes.
The important part is to keep your sitemap accessible, submit the main sitemap index, and make sure your indexing settings accurately reflect the content you want search engines to discover.