October 26, 2005
Here's another question we've gotten. If you have a question about Sitemaps, let us know by posting in the Sitemaps Google Group.
I've submitted a Sitemap for my site. What should I do when my site changes?
If you add pages to your site, you can let us know in several different ways:
- Resubmit your Sitemap: You can add the URLs to your existing Sitemap and then resubmit it either by using your Google Account or by sending us a ping (HTTP request).
- Create a new Sitemap: You can create a new Sitemap with only the new URLs and submit that separately using your Google Account.
- Use a Sitemap index file: You can create a new Sitemap with only the new URLs and then list both the original Sitemap and the new Sitemap in a Sitemap index file. Then, you can simply submit the Sitemap index file. If you often add pages to your site, you can periodically create a new Sitemap with new URLs, add the new Sitemap to the Sitemap index file, and resubmit the Sitemap index file.
Note that if you ping us to let us know about changes to your Sitemap, make sure that you submit
that Sitemap using your Google Account at least once. The Last Submitted date
shown in your Google Sitemaps Account lists the date you last submitted the Sitemap manually,
but if you receive a status 200 (OK) from the ping, we received it successfully.
If you've deleted pages from your site, you can delete those pages from your Sitemap and then resubmit it (either manually through your Google Account or by pinging us).