quick question about how "sitemaps" work...

3 replies
I uploaded a sitemap.xml for my site a few months ago. Since then, I've added many new HTML pages to my site. In my Google Webmaster Tools area, I have "resubmitted" my sitemap several times, hoping to have Google recognize my new pages, but my sitemap remains the same...it still shows only the original 6 pages from when I first submitted the sitemap. And yet, Google has indexed over 70 pages for my site.

So Google is indexing the new pages that I create, but it's not adding them to my sitemap. Re-submitting it does nothing. Is there a trick to doing this? Do I need to manually edit the sitemap file and add my new pages?
#question #quick #sitemaps #work
  • Profile picture of the author iVentureBiz
    don't you have to re-download the xml file then re-upload it to your site?
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  • Profile picture of the author Bob B
    First, no you don't have to re-upload the xml to your site.

    Second, I wouldn't worry too much about WMT saying it's only got 6 pages if Google have indexed over 70 in the actual search engine. The only real reason to submit a site map to WMT is to give Google a nudge. If you read the detail it tells you that submitting a sitemap may help Google find pages their crawls have missed... but equally it may not. They make no guarantees.

    I'm not saying don't submit your sitemap but I've got some sites which say they've indexed a few pages like yours and others that say they've indexed dozens - yet actual pages listed at the search engine are completely different - and it's there that you want your pages showing up, after all.

    Where I think WMT has some use is for seeing who is linking to you and what phrases Google has you ranked for so you can tinker with your content.
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