On Settings > Reading you can enable the XML Sitemap Index and (if needed) the Google News Sitemap. There is also an Additional robots.txt rules field.
Once a sitemap is enabled, its options can be found on Settings > XML Sitemap or on Settings > Google News.
Since April 2024, it’s no longer possible to submit new sites to the Google News Publisher Center.
If your site is new, you can only:
Continue publishing quality content and wait for Google News to discover and distribute it.
Create quality news articles.
Submit your Google News sitemap to your Google Search Console account to check its validity and performance. Create an account if you don’t have one yet.
You can find default settings for Priority on Settings > XML Sitemap. A fixed priority can be set on a post by post basis too.
Changefreq has been dropped since version 4.9 because it is no longer taken into account by Google.
Not necessarily. In normal circumstances, your site will be indexed by the major search engines before you know it. The search engines will be looking for a robots.txt file and (with this plugin activated) find a pointer in it to the XML Sitemap on your blog. The search engine crawlers will return on a regular basis to see if your site has updates.
But you can submit your sitemap(s) in Google Search Console account, Bing Webmaster Tools, Yandex Webmaster and Baidu Webmaster Tools to monitor your site and sitemap performance.
In recent plugin versions there is an option to submit the sitemap to Bing and Google right from the admin.
NOTE: If you have a server without rewrite rules, use your blog without fancy URLs (meaning, you have WordPress Permalinks set to the old default value) or have it installed in a subdirectory, then read Do I need to change my robots.txt for more instructions.
The latest release of the plugin introduces the Sitemap Notifier. This functionality re-establishes the possibility of XML Sitemap pings to Google, enhancing how your site interacts with search engines. Read more on how to connect your site to Google Search Console and how to connect your site to Bing Webmaster Tools.
In normal circumstances, if you have no static robots.txt file in your site root, the new sitemap url will be automatically added to the dynamic robots.txt that is generated by WordPress.
If you use a static robots.txt file in your website root, you will need to open it in a text editor. If there is already a line with Sitemap: http://yourblogurl.tld/sitemap.xml you can just leave it like it is. But if there is no sitemap referrence there, add it (adapted to your site url) to make search engines find your XML Sitemap.
Or if you have WP installed in a subdirectory, on a server without rewrite_rules or if you do not use fancy URLs in your Permalink structure settings. In these cases, WordPress will need a little help in getting ready for XML Sitemap indexing. Read on in the WordPress section for more.
That depends on where the index.php and .htaccess of your installation reside. If they are in the root while the rest of the WP files are installed in a subdir, so the site is accessible from your domain root, you do not have to do anything. It should work out of the box.
But if the index.php is together with your wp-config.php and all other WP files in a subdir, meaning your blog is only accessible via that subdir, you need to manage your own robots.txt file in your domain root. It has to be in the root (!) and needs a line starting with Sitemap: followed by the full URL to the sitemap feed provided by XML Sitemap Feed plugin. Like:Sitemap: http://yourblogurl.tld/subdir/sitemap.xml
If you already have a robots.txt file with another Sitemap reference like it, just add the full line below or above it.
No. While I would advise you to use any one of the nicer Permalink structures for better indexing, you might not be able to (or don’t want to) do that. If so, you can still use this plugin:
Check to see if the URL yourblog.url/?feed=sitemap does produce a feed. Now manually upload your own robots.txt file to your website root containing:
`
Sitemap: http://yourblog.url/?feed=sitemap
User-agent: *
Allow: /
`
You can also choose to notify major search engines of your new XML sitemap manually. Start with getting a Google Search Console account and submit your sitemap for the first time from there to enable tracking of sitemap downloads by Google! or head over to XML-Sitemaps.com and enter your sites sitemap URL.
Only with the XML Sitemap Advanced extension.
If you have fancy URL’s turned ON in WordPress (Permalinks), the sitemap url is yourblogurl.tld/wp-sitemap.xml or yourblogurl.tld/sitemap.xml depending on the XML Sitemap Server option. But if you have the Permalink Plain option set, the XML Sitemap is only available via yourblogurl.tld/?feed=sitemap.
Yes. In fact, it has been designed for it. Tested on WPMU 2.9.2 and WPMS 3+ both with normal activation and with Network Activate / Site Wide Activate.