Documentation → User Guides
Submitting to Search Engines
Tell Google, Bing, and other search engines about your sitemap.
Why Submit Your Sitemap?
While search engines can discover your sitemap automatically, submitting it directly provides several benefits:
- Faster discovery — New content is found more quickly
- Error reporting — Get notified of crawl errors
- Coverage insights — See which pages are indexed
- Update signals — Changes are detected sooner
Google Search Console
Google Search Console is the primary tool for managing how Google sees your site.
Step-by-Step Instructions
- Go to Google Search Console
- Sign in with your Google account
- Select your property (or add your site if not already verified)
- Click Sitemaps in the left navigation menu
- In the “Add a new sitemap” field, enter:
sitemap.xml - Click Submit
What Happens Next
Google will process your sitemap and show:
- Status — Success, Has errors, or Couldn’t fetch
- Discovered URLs — Number of URLs found
- Last read — When Google last fetched the sitemap
Note: Processing can take several days. The “Discovered” count may differ from your actual URL count as Google decides which pages to index.
Bing Webmaster Tools
Bing Webmaster Tools manages your presence on Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo (which uses Bing’s index).
Step-by-Step Instructions
- Go to Bing Webmaster Tools
- Sign in with your Microsoft account
- Select your site (or add it if not already verified)
- Click Sitemaps in the left navigation
- Click Submit sitemap
- Enter your full sitemap URL:
https://yoursite.com/sitemap.xml - Click Submit
Import from Google Search Console
Bing offers a quick setup option that imports your site verification and sitemap from Google Search Console:
- From the Bing Webmaster Tools homepage, click Import
- Sign in to your Google account when prompted
- Select the sites to import
- Click Import
robots.txt Method
You can also tell search engines about your sitemap by adding a reference to your robots.txt file. This method works for all search engines that follow the robots.txt standard.
Adding the Sitemap Directive
Add this line to the end of your robots.txt file:
Sitemap: https://yoursite.com/sitemap.xmlExample robots.txt
User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php
Sitemap: https://yoursite.com/sitemap.xmlTip: Many SEO plugins manage robots.txt for you. Check if your SEO plugin has a robots.txt editor before manually editing the file.
Other Search Engines
| Search Engine | Submission Method |
|---|---|
| Yandex | Yandex Webmaster → Indexing → Sitemap files |
| Baidu | Baidu Webmaster Tools (Chinese interface) |
| DuckDuckGo | Uses Bing’s index — submit to Bing |
| Yahoo | Uses Bing’s index — submit to Bing |
Verifying Submission
After submitting your sitemap, verify it was accepted:
Success Indicators
- Status shows “Success” — The sitemap was fetched and parsed correctly
- URLs are discovered — The search engine found URLs to process
- No errors reported — No XML or format issues detected
Common Issues
| Issue | Solution |
|---|---|
| “Couldn’t fetch” | Check that the sitemap URL is accessible publicly |
| “Has errors” | Validate your sitemap at XML Sitemap Validator |
| 0 URLs discovered | Ensure content types are enabled in plugin settings |
| Pending status | Wait 24-48 hours for processing |