How to Submit Your Sitemap to Google Search Console
A sitemap is a simple file that lists your important pages so search engines can find them quickly. Submitting it in Google Search Console is one of the first things you should do after launching a site — and again after any big content change.
Step 1: Find your sitemap URL
Depending on your SEO plugin, your sitemap is at one of these addresses:
- Rank Math:
yourdomain.com/sitemap_index.xml - Yoast SEO:
yourdomain.com/sitemap_index.xml - All in One SEO:
yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml - Default WordPress:
yourdomain.com/wp-sitemap.xml
Open the URL in your browser. If you see XML code with page links, it is working.
Step 2: Verify your site in Search Console
Go to search.google.com/search-console and sign in with your Google account. Click Add property, choose Domain (recommended) and enter your domain. Google will ask you to add a DNS TXT record at your registrar — copy the value, add the record, then click Verify. DNS verification can take a few minutes to a few hours to propagate.
If DNS feels intimidating, choose the URL prefix method instead and verify by uploading an HTML file, or simply by connecting your SEO plugin (Rank Math and Yoast both have a one-click connection).
Step 3: Submit the sitemap
In the left menu, open Sitemaps. In the "Add a new sitemap" box, type only the last part of the URL — for example sitemap_index.xml — and click Submit. You do not need to paste your full domain.
Step 4: Check the result
Status should read Success with a discovered-page count. If you see "Couldn’t fetch", check that:
- Your site is not blocking Google with a robots.txt rule or a coming-soon plugin
- The URL is exactly right (no typos, no
wwwmismatch) - Your caching or security plugin is not returning an error to crawlers
Step 5: Request indexing for important pages
Use the search bar at the top of Search Console to inspect a URL, then click Request Indexing. This prioritises crawling for new or updated posts — it does not guarantee instant ranking.
Step 6: Keep it healthy
- Resubmit or check the sitemap after deleting large numbers of posts
- Watch the Pages report for URLs excluded because of redirects or 404s
- Clear your cache before re-testing, so you are not testing a stale sitemap