Indexing and technical SEO
How to create and submit a sitemap in Google Search Console
A sitemap is a hint that lists the URLs you want Google to know about. You build it, submit it in the Sitemaps report, and read the status Google reports back. It does not guarantee crawling or indexing.
Checked against Google Search Console Help and Search Central · October 2026
Short answer
Create an XML (or RSS, Atom or text) sitemap with absolute canonical URLs, at most 50,000 URLs and 50 MB uncompressed per file, publish it, open the Sitemaps report, enter its address and submit. Then read the status: Success, Has errors or Couldn’t fetch.
Google’s own description is on the Sitemaps report help page ↗ .
The steps, in order
Each step follows Google’s documentation.
Decide whether you need one
Google says a site of about 500 pages or fewer, where every page can be reached by links from the homepage, probably does not need a sitemap. Hosting platforms such as Wix or Squarespace usually manage it for you.
Choose a format
XML is the most flexible. RSS, Atom and plain text also work, and Google says there is no difference for it. A text sitemap lists one URL per line and must end in .txt.
Build it from canonical URLs
Use fully qualified absolute URLs, UTF-8 encoding and only the canonical version of each page. A file may hold 50,000 URLs and 50 MB uncompressed; beyond that, split it and add a sitemap index. Put it at the root so it covers the whole site.
Submit it
Enter its address in the Sitemaps report, submit it through the Search Console API, or add a line “Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml” to robots.txt. The report is the way to see when Google read it and what went wrong.
Read the status
Success means it was fetched and read without errors. Has errors means it was partly read; the URLs that parsed cleanly are queued. Couldn’t fetch means Google could not get the file.
Fix and resubmit
Google tries a failing sitemap again for a few days and then stops, so fix the cause and submit it again.
What the messages and gaps mean
The fetch failed. Open the sitemap’s details page, expand the error for the reason, fix it and resubmit.
Google read part of it. Fix the listed errors; the URLs that parsed cleanly are still queued for crawling.
The report shows only sitemaps submitted through it or the API, and only for the current property. Check that you are not mixing http and https or www and non-www properties.
Discovered pages are URLs parsed from the file. There is no guarantee they are crawled or indexed; filter the Page indexing report by sitemap to see how many are indexed.
The sitemap URL you submit is used as is; redirects are not followed.
SITEMAPS
A sitemap is a hint, not a command
Google tries to crawl a sitemap as soon as you submit it and then rereads it at its own pace, independent of the site crawl. Listing a URL does not guarantee that it is crawled or indexed. The priority and changefreq tags are ignored, and lastmod is used only when it is reliably accurate, meaning the date of a significant change to the page.
Submitting from SEOKit
The workspace has a Sitemaps report and a form that submits up to 100 sitemap addresses at once. Submitting needs Google’s broader write permission, which the workspace asks for the first time you submit (see the documentation page on indexing and sitemaps). The Search Console report itself shows at most 1,000 submitted sitemaps.
Common mistakes
Do not list non-canonical or duplicate URLs
Put in the URLs you want shown in results, using the canonical version of each page.
Do not use relative URLs
Google crawls exactly the URLs you list, so each one must be fully qualified.
Do not rely on priority or changefreq
Google ignores both; keep lastmod honest or leave it out.