Niels Bosma
Niels Bosma

Reputation: 11498

Google webmaster tools: Sitemaps not indexing?

I've submitted sitemap.xml files to google webmaster tools and it says that i has all of the page in total but under "indexed" it says "--"? How long does it take for Google to start indexing? This was a couple of days ago.

Upvotes: 5

Views: 9775

Answers (3)

Simone Carletti
Simone Carletti

Reputation: 176472

A Sitemap is a way for webmasters to help Search Engines to easily discover more pages from their websites. A Sitemap should be considered an aid, not a duty. Even if you submit a Sitemap there's no guarantee that the URLs listed in the Sitemap will be read or included in Search Engine indexes.

Usually it takes from a few hours to some day to be indexed.

Quotes from a Google source

"We don't guarantee that we'll crawl or index all of your URLs. For example, we won't crawl or index image URLs contained in your Sitemap. However, we use the data in your Sitemap to learn about your site's structure, which will allow us to improve our crawler schedule and do a better job crawling your site in the future. In most cases, webmasters will benefit from Sitemap submission, and in no case will you be penalized for it."

Mod Note: An attribution link was originally here, but the site linked to no longer exists

Upvotes: 9

John Mueller
John Mueller

Reputation: 1481

In short: it depends.

If your website is new, Google will have to crawl and index it first. This can take time and depends on many factors (see the Google FAQs on indexing).

If the website is not new, it's possible that you are submitting URLs in the Sitemap file which do not match the URLs that were crawled and indexed. In this case, the indexed URL count is usually not zero, but this could theoretically be the case if the URLs in the Sitemap file are drastically wrong (eg with session-ids).

Finally, if you are submitting a non-web Sitemap file (eg for Google Video or Google News), it's normal for the indexed URL count to be zero: the count only applies for URLs within the normal web-search results.

Without knowing the URL of the Sitemap file it's impossible to say for sure which of the above applies.

Upvotes: 3

Aziz
Aziz

Reputation: 20735

It usually takes up to two weeks to be indexed. Just give it some time :)

Upvotes: 7

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