Reporting the Sitemap to search engines

Reporting via HTTP request

The easiest way to report the location of your Sitemap to the most popular search engines, is using a ping. It consist of visiting a link, which contain your Sitemap address.

You can find the links to visit, associated with the respective search engines, in the following list. You have to replace sitemap_url with the Sitemap URL.

• Google:
  http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap=sitemap_url

• MSN:
  http://webmaster.live.com/ping.aspx?siteMap=sitemap_url

• Yahoo:
  http://search.yahooapis.com/SiteExplorerService/V1/ping?sitemap=sitemap_url

• ASK:
  http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=sitemap_url

• Moreover:
  http://api.moreover.com/ping?u=sitemap_url
  

The HTTP request can be sent using your favourite tool, both from your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc..) or using commands such as wget or curl.
A correct reporting returns the HTTP code 200, which is an indication that the Sitemap was properly sent. In case you haven't received the code HTTP response described above, you have to proceed to resubmit, repeating the procedure.
It's important to remember that if you use multiple Sitemaps for the same site (with their Sitemap Index file) it's not required to report for each Sitemap, but should only be performed for the index file.

To simplify the operation of reporting Sitemap to search engines, IceLab offers to its registered users a tool which allow to manage the creation and reporting of Sitemaps, in a completely free and automated manner.

Example of Reporting a Sitemap to Google through ping

Open your favorite browser, such as Firefox, and type in the address bar the following code:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap=http://www.icelab.eu/sitemap_en.xml

Reporting via robots.txt

If you are already using the robots.txt file, just append to it the directive that indicate where the spider can find your Sitemap.
In any robots.txt file, you can put more than a Sitemap, simply adding a line for each of them.
In the case you're using a Sitemap Index file, it's needed to signal its address within the file, avoiding to insert individual Sitemap URLs.

Regarding the "Sitemaps" directive within the robots.txt, you don't need to locate them in a particular position, because it's independent from the parameter user-agent.

Sitemap Reporting Sintax

Sitemap: http://www.yoursite.com/sitemap.xml

Example of reporting on a single Sitemap

Sitemap: http://www.icelab.eu/sitemap_en.xml

Example of reporting on more than one Sitemaps

Sitemap: http://www.icelab.eu/sitemap1.xml
Sitemap: http://www.icelab.eu/sitemap2.xml
Sitemap: http://www.icelab.eu/sitemap3.xml

Example of reporting on a Sitemap Index File

Sitemap: http://www.icelab.eu/sitemap_index.xml