Do I need to resubmit my sitemap after every new page?

No. After a successful read, Google recrawls a submitted sitemap periodically on its own schedule. Google's help page suggests resubmitting only after big changes to the sitemap; for small updates, let Google follow its regular schedule.

How long does Google take to read a sitemap?

Google says a newly submitted sitemap should be fetched immediately, and the Last read column shows when it happened. Crawling the URLs listed in it takes longer, and not every URL may be crawled, depending on the site's size, activity and traffic.

Does submitting a sitemap get every page indexed?

No. Google calls a submitted sitemap a hint and says there is no guarantee that a URL discovered in a sitemap has been or will be crawled or indexed. Filter the Page indexing report by the sitemap to see how many of its URLs are indexed.

Can I submit a sitemap without owner access to the property?

Not through the Sitemaps report, which requires owner permissions. Without them, add a sitemap line to your robots.txt file instead; Google finds it the next time it crawls robots.txt.

What happens if I remove a sitemap in Search Console?

The sitemap disappears from the report, but Google does not forget the sitemap or the URLs listed in it. To stop Google visiting them, block them in robots.txt, delete them, or serve noindex.

How to Submit a Sitemap to Google in Search Console

To submit a sitemap to Google, post the sitemap file on your site, open the Sitemaps report in Google Search Console, paste the sitemap URL into Add a new sitemap and click Submit. You need owner permissions on the property. Then check the Status column for Success and filter the Page indexing report by that sitemap. ^{[2]Google Search Console Help. Sitemaps report}

Submitting does not upload anything. It tells Google where to find the file, and Google treats it as a hint, not a promise to crawl. ^{[2]Google Search Console Help. Sitemaps report} ^{[1]Google Search Central. Build and submit a sitemap} The useful part is what comes after: the report tells you whether Google could read the file and how many of its URLs ended up in the index.

How do you submit a sitemap to Google in Search Console?

Google's help page lists the procedure in this order. ^{[2]Google Search Console Help. Sitemaps report}

1. Check you are an owner of the right property

The Sitemaps report only accepts submissions from users with owner permissions on the property. It also only shows sitemaps that belong to the property you have open: a sitemap submitted under http://example.com does not appear under https://example.com or http://m.example.com. ^{[2]Google Search Console Help. Sitemaps report} If you are unsure which property type you set up, Domain vs URL-prefix properties explains what each one covers.

2. Post the sitemap on your site

The file has to live on your server at a URL Google can fetch. Google recommends the site root, because a sitemap there can cover every file on the site. ^{[1]Google Search Central. Build and submit a sitemap} If your site runs on a hosting service, check its documentation for where the sitemap is. ^{[2]Google Search Console Help. Sitemaps report}

3. Test that Google can reach the file

Run a live test of the sitemap URL with URL Inspection and confirm that Page fetch says "Successful". ^{[2]Google Search Console Help. Sitemaps report} This catches a robots.txt block or a wrong path before you submit.

4. Paste the URL and click Submit

Open the Sitemaps report, paste the sitemap URL into the Add a new sitemap box and click Submit. Google says the sitemap should be fetched immediately, while crawling the URLs inside it can take time, and some may not be crawled at all depending on the site's size, activity and traffic. ^{[2]Google Search Console Help. Sitemaps report}

5. Open the row if the status is not Success

Click the row to see the details. Check back now and then: the help page asks you to confirm periodically that Google can still fetch and process your sitemaps. ^{[2]Google Search Console Help. Sitemaps report}

If your site uses a sitemap index, submit the index file. One submission covers the child sitemaps it lists. ^{[1]Google Search Central. Build and submit a sitemap} You can also submit through the Search Console API, which Google says offers the same functionality as the report. ^{[2]Google Search Console Help. Sitemaps report}

Find or build your sitemap URL

Before you submit anything, find out whether you already have a sitemap. Google notes that a CMS such as WordPress, Wix or Blogger has probably made one available already. ^{[3]Google Search Central. Learn about sitemaps} Try /sitemap.xml and /sitemap_index.xml on your domain, or look for a Sitemap: line in /robots.txt.

If you build one yourself, these are the rules Google enforces: ^{[1]Google Search Central. Build and submit a sitemap}

Format: XML, RSS 2.0 / Atom 1.0, or a plain text file with one URL per line. Google has no preference between them.
Size: one sitemap holds at most 50 MB uncompressed or 50,000 URLs. Split anything larger and list the parts in a sitemap index.
Encoding: UTF-8, with tag values entity-escaped.
URLs: fully qualified and absolute (https://www.example.com/page, not /page). Google crawls them exactly as listed.
Which URLs: only the ones you want in Google's results. Order does not matter.

Hand-written files only make sense for a few dozen URLs; above that, generate the sitemap automatically. ^{[1]Google Search Central. Build and submit a sitemap} "Which URLs you want in results" means your canonical versions. Listing duplicates sends Google mixed signals, the kind behind Duplicate without user-selected canonical and Google choosing a different canonical.

Do you need one at all? Google says a site of about 500 pages or fewer that is well linked internally, without much video, images or news content, might not. A large site, a new site with few external links, or a site heavy on rich media probably does. ^{[3]Google Search Central. Learn about sitemaps} Submitting rarely hurts; in most cases, Google says, a site benefits from having one. ^{[3]Google Search Central. Learn about sitemaps}

Add the sitemap to robots.txt

The second way to tell Google about a sitemap is a line in robots.txt. Google finds it the next time it crawls the file, and this works without owner access to Search Console. ^{[1]Google Search Central. Build and submit a sitemap} ^{[2]Google Search Console Help. Sitemaps report}

User-agent: *
Disallow: /admin/

Sitemap: https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml

The value must be a fully qualified URL including the protocol and host. It can point to a sitemap or a sitemap index, it does not have to be on the same host as robots.txt, and you can list as many Sitemap: lines as you need. The field name is case-insensitive; the URL is case-sensitive. ^{[4]Google Search Central. How Google interprets the robots.txt specification} The line can go anywhere in the file. ^{[1]Google Search Central. Build and submit a sitemap}

Do both. The Sitemaps report only shows sitemaps submitted through the report or the API, not ones Google found in robots.txt, so submitting in Search Console is what gives you the status and the indexing numbers. ^{[2]Google Search Console Help. Sitemaps report}

Read the Sitemaps report: Success, Couldn't fetch, Has errors

Every submitted sitemap is a row in the Submitted sitemaps table. The columns, as Google defines them: ^{[2]Google Search Console Help. Sitemaps report}

Column	What it tells you
Sitemap URL	The exact URL you submitted. Redirects are not followed, so submit the final URL.
Type	Sitemap, Sitemap index, RSS, Atom, or Unknown (not processed yet or not a known type).
Submitted	When the sitemap was last submitted through the report.
Last read	When Google last fetched it. Empty if it could not be fetched.
Status	Success, Has errors or Couldn't fetch, for the latest crawl.
Discovered pages	How many page URLs Google parsed from the file (for an index: all child sitemaps, duplicates counted once).

And the three statuses: ^{[2]Google Search Console Help. Sitemaps report}

Status	What it means	What to do
Success	Fetched and processed with no errors; all URLs are queued for crawling.	Nothing. Move on to the indexing check below.
Has errors	Fetched and partly read. URLs that parsed cleanly are still queued.	Open the row and fix each listed error (invalid date, invalid URL, parsing error, URL not allowed, too many URLs).
Couldn't fetch	Google could not get the file.	Check robots.txt, the URL (a 404), server availability, and any unresolved manual action. Fix, then resubmit.

When a fetch fails, Google retries for a few days and then stops if the file is still unavailable or broken, so a Couldn't fetch row needs attention rather than patience. ^{[2]Google Search Console Help. Sitemaps report} On the detail page, the same problem can appear as the message "Sitemap could not be read". Errors on individual URLs, by contrast, do not stop Google reading the rest of the sitemap. ^{[2]Google Search Console Help. Sitemaps report}

The thing people get wrong: Success means Google read the file. It says nothing about indexing. Google states plainly that a URL discovered in a sitemap has no guarantee of being crawled or indexed. ^{[2]Google Search Console Help. Sitemaps report}

Check how many sitemap URLs are indexed

Many sitemap guides stop before this step. Google says you can filter the Page indexing report by sitemap to see how many page URLs from that sitemap are indexed; the See index coverage link on a sitemap row opens that view. ^{[2]Google Search Console Help. Sitemaps report}

A worked example (the figures are constructed to illustrate the pattern): a blog submits https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml. Status is Success and Discovered pages is 180. The Page indexing report filtered to that sitemap shows 142 indexed and 38 not indexed. Those 38 are the list to work through. The not-indexed reasons tell you whether each URL is a duplicate, a redirect, blocked, or simply not chosen yet. For a handful of URLs you have just fixed, request indexing one URL at a time; the sitemap covers the rest.

Indexed is the start, not the finish. Once the pages are in, their impressions and clicks show up in the Performance report.

Resubmitting after changes, and what lastmod does

You do not resubmit for every new page. After a successful read, Google recrawls the sitemap periodically at a pace unrelated to the site crawl. Resubmit only after big changes to the sitemap; otherwise let Google follow its schedule. ^{[2]Google Search Console Help. Sitemaps report}

What makes a recrawl useful is <lastmod>. Google uses it when it is consistently and verifiably accurate, and it should reflect the last significant update to the page: main content, structured data or links, not a new copyright year. Google ignores <priority> and <changefreq>. ^{[1]Google Search Central. Build and submit a sitemap} How lastmod fits into getting many changed pages recrawled is covered in how to request indexing.

Removing a sitemap from the report does not make Google forget it or its URLs. To stop Google visiting them, use a robots.txt rule, delete the files, or serve noindex. ^{[2]Google Search Console Help. Sitemaps report} After merging or redirecting pages, update the sitemap so it lists only the surviving URLs.

Once your pages are indexed and collecting impressions, the next job is the ones ranking just off page one. Our low hanging fruit finder reads your Search Console data and ranks the keywords in positions 4 to 30 by the clicks a realistic ranking gain would bring.

How to Submit a Sitemap to Google (and Check It Was Read)