Google Says Sitemaps Don’t Ensure Fast Crawling

Recently, Google’s John Mueller addressed a question about sitemaps during a discussion in the r/TechSEO community on Reddit. He explained something important: just because you upload a sitemap does not mean that Google will crawl your URLs right away.

What Was the Question?

A Reddit user asked whether they should only upload their main sitemap file, called sitemap.xml, or if they also needed to upload other sitemaps like page-sitemap.xml and sitemap-misc.xml. This question came up because they had recently changed the names of their website pages, known as page slugs.

The user wanted to know:
“Is submitting sitemap.xml enough, or should I submit the other sitemaps too? How long will it take for Google to notice my changes?”

John Mueller’s Response

John Mueller responded that uploading just the main sitemap.xml file is enough. Google would look at this file and find the other sitemaps linked within it. However, he pointed out something very important: uploading a sitemap does not guarantee that Google will crawl all the URLs immediately. In fact, there is no specific schedule for how quickly Google’s bots will crawl the URLs listed in the sitemap.

He advised that while it is fine to submit individual sitemaps, it is not necessary. For specific pages, he suggested using the Inspect URL tool, which allows users to directly check and request crawling for individual URLs.

Is It Worth Uploading All Sitemaps?

John Mueller believes that uploading just the index sitemap file is sufficient. However, many Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experts feel it is safer to upload all relevant sitemaps, especially when there have been changes to URLs. This helps ensure that Google is aware of the updates, reducing the chance that some URLs might be missed.

The URL Inspection tool is a good choice for prompting Google to crawl specific pages. The only downside is that you can only request crawling for one URL at a time. This means that if you have many URLs to check, it can be a time-consuming process because bulk submissions are not allowed.

Conclusion

In summary, while uploading your main sitemap file is generally enough, SEOs often prefer to upload all relevant sitemaps to minimize the risk of missing URLs. Additionally, using the URL Inspection tool is a smart way to ensure specific pages are crawled, even if it requires more effort.

For those interested in learning more, you can read about how Bing recommends using lastmod tags for AI search indexing here.

Understanding how Google crawls websites can help you better manage your site’s visibility and accessibility on the web.