The dirty little secret about XML SiteMaps

Submitting a list of URLs to a search engine is a good moment for any website developer. It means you’ve arrived at a point where the site or application is ready for prime time and pushing it into ‘the wild’ for everyone to see it is a cause for an mental high five. Or is it?

While submitting URLs via Google Search Console is easy enough using free XML Sitemap generators, dropping the file onto the root directory of the website server and then verifying it inside Google Search Console, the hard part is waiting for the indexation to occur and managing client reporting.

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Enter Pro-SiteMaps that host the XML SiteMap. Their real time dashboard gives extra comfort beyond Google as you can see daily movements of URLs being indexed as the sitemaps are constantly being generated from their servers. Initially we were concerned about having duplicate sitemaps yet Oleg, the founder of Pro-SiteMaps, confirmed that multiple sitemaps isn’t deemed to be falling foul of Google’s indexation policies. There’s no rule book on this yet from what we can tell over dozens of clients, multiple sitemaps using both 3rd party services and Google Search Console is acceptable.