How do I get changes in my site to show in Google?

How to submit a sitemap to Google for indexing

Normally if there are links to your site and stories from elsewhere on the web, search engine crawlers can find your content and index it without intervention.

However, sometimes you need to give Google (and other search engines) a helping hand, and this is done by submitting sitemaps to search engines for indexing.

What is a sitemap?

A sitemap is an automatically generated machine-readable XML file containing links to all the stories and pages on your site. Once submitted to Google, they periodically check the file for changes, and crawl updated links.

How do I submit a sitemap for indexing through Google?

Firstly you have to ensure your site is verified (i.e. Google knows you are the owner of it) before you can submit a sitemap for indexing. Skip step 1 if you have already done this and your URL already appears in Google Search console.

Step 1 - verify ownership of your domain through Google Search console.

Go to Google search console, select add property and choose URL prefix:

 

Choose to verify via HTML tag, copy the tag and save it‼️:

Go back to your Prezly site's SEO settings and paste the copied HTML tag:

Wait for a few minutes and go back to the Google search console, verify ownership of the site:

Step 2 - submit your sitemap for indexing

Go to sitemaps and submit the URL for your site's sitemap.

Your site's sitemap will be under [your_site_url]/sitemap.xml

Prezly site's sitemap example
Prezly site's sitemap example

Choose your domain (marked 1 below) then click Sitemaps (marked 2)

The "Add new sitemap" dialogue already populates your site's URL, you only need to type in the filename: sitemap.xml and click submit.

Google will then queue up your site for indexing. Please note this can often take up to 48 hours, but you can check back in Google Search Console for status.


If you still have doubts or get stuck, don't hesitate to reach out to support@prezly.com or ping us using the support chat.

 

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