: The URLs in my XML sitemap not being indexed by Google I am new to Google SEO and I created a sitemap with 636 URLs. I have tried 3 to 4 ideas that I've found here to get the URL indexed

@Kimberly868

In your robots.txt add the line

Sitemap: your.web.site/sitemap.xml
On the Google Web master tool web site, go to exploration > sitemaps in the menu of your web site. Then just click add a sitemap.

Check that your url is correct, and wait for Google results, after some min the result will be displayed.

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@Megan663

It is not enough just to create a sitemap and submit it. To get URLs indexed you have to link to them on your website, ideally from multiple places each. See: The Sitemap Paradox

You also have to get enough inbound links to your site so that Google sees that it is popular enough to deserve to have that many URLs indexed. For a brand new site with no inbound links, Google may only choose to index a handful of pages. Once your site is more established and has many recommendations (in the form of inbound links) then Google will index hundreds of pages.

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@Vandalay111

Google get tons of request to index many of pages in search result, so simply they ignore many of request, even with high quality of pages that have no reputation.

Many of webpages does not have sitemap, but they are indexed on Google search result, just because of do-follow backlinks. For example developer.android.com. there is no any sitemap on root directory, but many of peoples are pointing that site on own article pages, hence when the Google bot is come to that article page, then Google bot crawl that android developer page and index it.

Also internal linking help to crawl better. So make sure you have some high quality of pages that have some reputation from others.

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@Harper822

Start with robots.txt and make sure its setup properly and placed in the document root folder of your site. Google follows rules in robots.txt. Make sure that file does not contain "disallow: /" under googlebot's user agents or under a star user agent. If it does, then that's why google won't index, just because robots.txt stops it.

When that's done, follow closetnoc's advice and build a quality website with quality links, then submit a sitemap of all the important links.

Also, use various google's tools including the Fetch as Google tool in webmaster tools and google's page-speed insights tool to test random pages of your site to make sure they are fast and that they follow google's webmaster quality guidelines. All this can be found with google.

Also, in webmaster tools, if you select the gear icon at the top-right in webmaster tools, and go to site settings, change google's crawl rate for the site to 2 requests per second instead of 0.33 requests per second to possibly increase the chances of your pages being indexed faster.

Other than that, just be patient.

Visit: support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769?hl=en to see what google's webmaster guidelines are all about.

One more thing. Make sure your content is original. An example of duplicated content is you running a website where you pull in news stories from a major news website and placing minor decorations around it and claiming it your own. Having a site like that will very unlikely be indexed with any search engine.

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@Nimeshi995

Sitemaps are not the be all - end all that most people think they are. Let me set the record straight.

From this answer: sitemap.xml for a website with forum


As far as sitemaps, they are intended only to inform search engines of
what pages your site may have. Generally speaking, sitemaps benefit
those sites that are very large, cannot or do not link all pages
directly, have a barrier such as a pay-wall or login, or where not all
pages can be found easily via the linking method used.

Search engines generally prefer to spider any site the old fashioned
way. However, if a sitemap is supplied, search engines will compare
the sitemap to the pages they can already capture without a sitemap.
If the two lists are the same or end up being the same, search engines
will prefer to spider and index any site by following links. Part of
the reason for this is rather simple. Links signal importance and
sitemaps remove this signal. It is quite common that other than
reading the sitemap for comparison, search engines will ignore a
sitemap. One common exception is for very large sites.


Having said that, for a smaller site, the sitemap is largely ignored. But do not let that frustrate you. It should not.

What is important is that your links are easy to follow, your site has quality content, and that your site performs well in the SERPs. Google will index a site in it's own time. You cannot hurry Google up. Do not try. It makes the big G mad when you do.

Another interesting phenomenon is that Google does not always the entire site leaving some pages on the table. For example, of my nearly 700,000 pages, about 32,000 are not indexed and will not be quickly. This is true for smaller sites too. What encourages Google to index more pages is fresh content. Keep adding content and improving older content. As well, SERP performance is another factor. Google will index an entire site if it is a top performer and that takes time- trust me.

Here is the good news. If you are willing to accept what is true, then you can deal with it by creating the best site available and anyone can create a top performing site, but it takes time. No new site come out of the gate a winner. You have to run the field for a while to know how to compete and what races you should run and what tracks are in your favor.

My immediate advice is to create great content, making the site simple to use and index, and work on performing well in the SERPs. Do not worry about what you cannot control and work on what you can control.

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@Cofer257

Build. More. Links.

Seriously, Google will not index, or even more importantly, rank those 600+ pages, even if you force-feed it your sitemap a couple of times every day.

The only thing that can make Google interested in your website (on top of decent content and site-structure) are links from other websites that point to your site...nothing else even comes close.

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