The XML sitemap is a file that the majority of websites generate automatically, often without their owners paying attention. This file lists the URLs of a site to guide the indexing bots of Google, Bing, or other search engines. Its presence does not guarantee a better ranking, but its absence or misconfiguration can slow down or even prevent the crawling of strategic pages.
End of Google ping: what has changed for sitemap submission
For years, the standard method to notify Google of a sitemap update was to send a request to the /ping?sitemap= Google endpoint. This mechanism, widely integrated into SEO plugins for WordPress and other CMSs, allowed for automatic notification of every change to the sitemap.xml file.
Since 2023-2024, Google has permanently disabled this endpoint, which now returns a 404 error. Sites that continue to use this method through their plugins no longer notify anything at all. Several CMS extensions have not yet updated their code to reflect this change, creating a false impression of normal operation.
The three submission methods that remain operational deserve to be checked on each site:
- Declaration in the robots.txt file, via a line Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml, read by bots during each visit
- Manual submission in the Sitemaps report of Google Search Console, which displays the read status, the date of the last crawl, and the number of discovered URLs
- Automation via the Search Console Sitemaps API, presented by Google as the official programmatic replacement for ping
Checking which method your site is actually using is a prerequisite for any sitemap optimization. A perfectly structured file is useless if Google is never informed of its existence. To learn more about Tekniko, the page details the technical aspects of setting up a sitemap compliant with current standards.
Lastmod, priority, and changefreq tags: what Google really reads in an XML sitemap
The XML format of the sitemap offers several optional tags for each listed URL. Three of them consistently appear in SEO guides: lastmod, priority, and changefreq. Their actual usefulness diverges significantly from what many tutorials suggest.
Priority and changefreq are no longer useful for SEO
Both Google and Bing confirm that they ignore the priority and changefreq tags for crawling and ranking. These parameters, inherited from the early versions of the sitemap protocol, do not influence either the crawling frequency or the positioning of a page.
Some sitemap generators still assign a priority value of 0.8 or 1.0 to all pages, which amounts to signaling nothing at all. Keeping these tags is not penalizing, but optimizing them for SEO purposes is a waste of time.
Reliable lastmod: the only signal that Google uses
The lastmod tag, on the other hand, is still utilized by search engines, provided it reflects a real content change. A lastmod date that corresponds to the last actual change of the page helps Google prioritize the recrawl of recently updated URLs.
The common problem: many CMSs update the lastmod date with every save, even without visible content changes (plugin change, global theme update). Google learns to ignore sitemaps whose lastmod dates change constantly without reason. The reliability of this tag directly conditions the trust that the engine places in the file.
Sitemap and crawl budget: errors that hinder indexing
The sitemap is not just a list of URLs. It directs the crawl budget, which is the number of pages that Googlebot will explore during each visit to a site. A poorly filtered sitemap dilutes this budget across pages with no SEO value.
Three errors frequently appear in technical audits:
- Including noindex pages in the sitemap, which sends a contradictory signal to indexing bots (the sitemap says “crawl this page,” the meta tag says “do not index it”)
- Listing URLs that return 301, 404, or 410 codes, forcing Googlebot to waste requests on redirects or dead pages
- Keeping URLs with duplicate parameters (filters, sorts, paginations) that create dozens of variants for the same content
An XML sitemap should exclusively contain the pages you want to appear in search results. Each added URL consumes a fraction of the crawl budget. On a site with a few dozen pages, the impact remains marginal. On an e-commerce site or a media outlet publishing daily, an unfiltered sitemap can delay the indexing of recent content by several days.
XML Sitemap and Search Console: interpreting coverage data
Submitting a sitemap in Google Search Console is not enough. The associated coverage report provides data that allows for diagnosing indexing issues before they affect traffic.
The first indicator to monitor is the gap between the number of submitted URLs and the number of indexed URLs. A significant discrepancy signals that Google is refusing to index some of the listed pages. The reasons vary: detected duplicate content, pages deemed low quality, or technical accessibility issues.
The report also distinguishes between “discovered but not indexed” URLs and “crawled but not indexed” ones. The first category indicates that Google knows the page but has not yet visited it, often due to a lack of crawl budget. The second reveals that Google has read the page and chosen not to index it, pointing to a content or quality issue.
Field feedback varies on the ideal frequency for checking these reports. For a site whose content evolves weekly, a monthly check in Search Console allows for spotting issues before they accumulate. For a stable showcase site, a quarterly audit of the sitemap and its coverage remains sufficient.
The XML sitemap remains a discreet technical lever, but its maintenance conditions Google’s ability to crawl and index a site effectively. Checking the active submission method, cleaning up obsolete URLs, and monitoring the coverage report in Search Console are the three concrete actions that produce a measurable effect on organic visibility.
