Google provide a URL to append your sitemap.xml URL to so you can easily “ping” them with changes you’ve made to your website.
Enter your sitemap URL into the box to generate your URL and ping Google with your XML sitemap. This will add your sitemap file to a queue to be recrawled by GoogleBot, perfect if you’ve just made changes, added pages or added internal links to your website.
After pressing ping, a new tab will open on google.com that says;
“Sitemap Notification Received”
“Your sitemap has been successfully added to our list of Sitemaps to crawl.
Google.com
You’re also prompted to add your sitemap to search console.
Here is how you go about submitting your sitemap.xml file to Google.
If you’re yet to set up Google Search Console for your website, here is how to get started.
The Sitemap Ping URL for Google
Google provide a URL for you to append your sitemap.xml URL to, which, when loaded in a browser will “ping” Google to encourage them to crawl your sitemap and your website.
The URL that google provide is;
https://www.google.com/ping?sitemap=FULL_URL_OF_SITEMAPJust append your sitemap.xml URL in place of the “FULL_URL_OF_SITEMAP” parameter string and load the URL in a browser window to ping your sitemap to Google.
Our Google ping sitemap.xml tool is simpler, just add your sitemap.xml URL there and press “Ping Sitemap”.
Use the Ping Sitemap URL Bookmark
We’ve made it even simpler to ping the sitemap URL of any sitemap page you have open in your browser with the ping sitemap bookmark.
Just create a new bookmark in your browser and add the code below to the URL field in you new bookmark:
javascript:(function() { var currentPage = window.location.href; var pingUrl = "https://www.google.com/ping?sitemap=%22%20+%20currentPage;%20%20%20var%20additionalUrl%20=%20%22https://searchnatural.co.uk/google-ping-sitemap/%22;%20%20%20window.open(pingUrl,%20%22_blank%22);%20%20%20window.open(additionalUrl,%20%22_blank%22);%20})();Whenever you want to ping the sitemap URL of your website to google, open the sitemap.xml URL of the site to ping in a tab and click the bookmark where you’ve saved the JavaScript code.
The bookmark will append your sitemap URL to the Google ping sitemap page and open it in a new tab, correctly pinging your website sitemap URL to Google.
Here are Google’s other free tools to help with your SEO efforts for your website.
Sitemap.xml files are an important element of technical SEO for every indexable website.
Why pinging your sitemap URL is important?
Google considers a “ping” of your sitemap to the URL tool as different to just including your sitemap in the robots.txt file of your website. John Mueller tweeted about this back in October 2022.
Pinging a sitemap is a bit different than just providing it in the robots.txt — by pinging, you're actively flagging a change in the sitemap file. If you're keen on having new content indexed quickly, that's a good practice.
— John Mueller is mostly not here 🐀 (@JohnMu) October 12, 2022
Whereas including your sitemap.xml files in your robots.txt is good practice and should be done permanently, it is a passive way to help search engines discover your sitemap.
Pinging your sitemap to Google, via the ping URL tool, is a more proactive way of signalling to Google that you’ve made changes to your website pages or your sitemap file.
Where to find your Sitemap.xml URL
The best way to find your sitemap.xml file is to load the robots.txt file of your website.
Your robots.txt file will be found on yourdomain.com /robots.txt (see below)
https://www.yourrobotsdomain.com/robots.txtIf your sitemap.xml file is not listed there, you can try these steps to find your sitemap URL.
If it’s not there, try loading yourdomain /sitemap.xml or load Google search console and click “sitemaps” to see if your URL is listed there.
If there’s still nothing after trying these steps, then you will need to check with your development team, webmaster or SEO to get this sorted.
If you are unsure whether you have a sitemap you may want to contact an SEO consultant to help you.
How to Ping Your Sitemap to Google
Pinging a sitemap to inform Google of updates or sitewide changes is easy, just paste your sitemap.xml URL above and press ping sitemap to inform the search engine of changes you have made to your site.
Submitting your sitemap to search console can help Googlebot locate your sitemap easily, crawl frequently and quickly discover new URLs added to your website.
Is there an API to Ping Your Sitemap to Google?
Yes, Google provide an API to allow you to ping sitemaps easily.
Your request will be a http PUT request to googleapis.com including your site URL in the subfolders of the request URL.
You’ll need to be a authenticated, authorised webmaster to ping your sitemap URLs via the request method.
Google provide a framework and playground for you to test the Google ping sitemap API with supporting documentation.
How Long Does Google Take to Index a Sitemap?
According to Google documentation you should allow “at least a week after submitting a sitemap or sitemap index request” before you should see changes reflected in Google search results.
The best way to “see” whether Google has begun crawling your URLs after a fresh sitemap ping submission is to check your server logs. Here you should be able to identify instances of Googlebot, their crawl timestamp and the URLs they are hitting to understand how Googlebot is crawling through your website.
Add Your Sitemap.xml URL to Your robots.txt File
You should include your sitemap.xml file as part of your robots.txt file.
The robots.txt file is where search engines go for instructions on crawling your website, here they discover URLs they aren’t allowed to access so it makes sense to include your sitemap.xml file here too.
by Ben Ullmer
