Hi, I'm Daniel Weisberg, Search Advocated Google. And today I'll talk about how to use the Search Console SiteMap report. By the end of this video, you should be able to understand what a site map is, decide whether you need one or not, and learn how to submit a site map and track its status using Search Console. A site map is a signal about which URLs you would like Google to crawl on your site. It may provide information on URLs that were recently created or modified and give us some extra information about them. Google supports four main ways for you to provide additional information. You can extend a URL with images included in it. You can include information about alternate languages or counter-version with AJAF Langa notations. And finally, for new sites, you can use a special variation of site maps to give us information about the most recent updates. Note that this information won't necessarily be highlighted on Search Console, but you can still provide it in your site map. But if I don't have a site map, will Google find all my pages? I'm glad you asked, John. Usually, if you have a relatively small website and your pages are properly linked, Google Bot can discover your content, so you don't need to worry about a site map. However, if your site meets one of the following criteria, a site map might help Google decide what and when to crawl your website. If your site is really large, a site map will help Google prioritize the URLs to crawl. If your pages are isolated or not well linked to each other, a site map might help Google find those pages. If your site is new, or it has a lot of quickly changing content, such as a news website, a site map will help Google discover your content. Please remember that using a site map doesn't guarantee that all your pages will be crawled and indexed. But in most cases, your site will benefit from having a site map. And there is no disadvantage for having one. In addition, site maps don't replace normal crawling, and not including your URLs in a site map won't result in those URLs no longer being crawled. Interesting. I might need a site map, but how can I create one? Another great question, John. Ideally, the system running your website will make site map files for you automatically. For example, you can find a WordPress plugin or Drupal extension if you use those content management systems. Check the documentation from your provider as every platform is slightly different. We recommend finding a way to automatically generate site maps, rather than creating them manually. Usually, this will involve running code on your server, so if you're not a developer, you might need help from one. There are limits to the number of URLs and the maximum size of a site map file. If you need more space, you can make multiple site map files. You can also submit all of these site map files together in the form of an index site map file. Doing that makes it a bit easier to track them all together in one place. To learn more about site maps, formats, and guidelines, check our Help Center. Before I go into Search Console, please note that the site maps report shows only site maps that you submitted using Search Console. It does not show any site maps discovered through a robot's text reference or other discovery methods. However, even if we already discovered a site map through other means, you can still submit it using this report in order to track errors and warnings. So let's look at the report. Open Search Console and find the site maps report. If you have already submitted one or more site maps, you'll find the following information about each site map that you submitted. The site map URL, the type or format of site map, such as XML, text, RSS, or Atom, the less submission date using this report, the date it was less read by Google, the crawl status, such as success, has errors, couldn't fetch, and others, the number of URLs discovered in the site map. You will note an icon next to each successful site map. Clicking it will lead you to the index-covert status report for the specific site map. I'll talk about this report in the next episode. But site maps can also be partially read, even if they have errors. If your site map status is success, good job. If you have any errors in the status column, click the specific row to see more details. You'll find a complete list of errors and what to do in each case in the Search Console Help Center. If you want to submit a new site map, simply open the site maps report and submit the URL. You will need owner permission for a property in order to submit it. If you submitted a site map, but it's not relevant anymore, you can delete it from Search Console. But know that deleting a site map removes it from this report, but doesn't make Google forget the site map or any URLs listed on it. In order for Google to forget the site map, just remove it from your site and return a 404. After some attempts, Google will give up and completely stop refreshing the site map. But this has nothing to do with the URLs in the site map. If you truly need Google to stop visiting the URLs listed in a site map, you will need to return a 404 or use a robot's text rule for the URLs that you want to block. This is what you would do in order for Google to stop crawling this page. If your goal is to remove the URL from the Google index altogether, you should either use the no index directive or require HTTP authentication for users to see your page. I hope this video helped you understand when you should use the site map and how Search Console can help you. In the next episode, I'll talk about how to use Search Console to check which of your pages have been indexed and any problems found during that process. And by the way, check out the S Google Webmaster series where John Miller, our guest star today, actually enters lots of questions submitted by the Webmaster community. And don't forget to subscribe to the Google Webmaster's YouTube channel, where we'll be publishing lots of Search Console videos. So stay tuned.