Setting up XML sitemap on Google XML Sitemaps
1. Install and activate the plugin
![](/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/93252010-80008dc9a2e05a5b40f03ca9.png)
![](/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/93252056-02f1bd7e18bcc2d18dc84075.png)
2. Access robots.txt
Virtual robots.txt is generated. Let’s access it.
For example, if the running WordPress URL is https://getshifter.io
, add /robots.txt
to the tail of that URL to access it.
Sample robots.txt:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
Sitemap: /sitemap_index.xml
3. Check the sitemap.xml
Sitemap’s URL for an app will be like this: /sitemap.xml
.
![](/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/93252185-14e2c062019ddda170afa1df.png)
![](/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/93252368-00a92fb783cf10d4db38bca1.png)
XML Sitemap Index generated by Google XML Sitemaps plugin:
![](/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/93252830-61f8308a0800a26be178f4ca.png)
4. Disable notification settings
To avoid sending temporary URLs to search engines, uncheck the following two checkboxes under [Basic Option]:
-
Notify Google about updates of your site
-
Notify Bing (formerly MSN Live Search) about updates of your site
5. Generate and deploy artifact
After checking the sitemap file, let’s make it public.
Click [Generate Artifact] button
![](/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/93252664-188a641d82f5b605ec4bf626.png)
6. Check robots.txt file again.
Access your Shifter site by adding /robots.txt
to the tail of the URL.
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
Sitemap: http://modest-wescoff7228.static.getshifter.net/sitemap_index.xml
7. Access deployed site and its generated sitemap.xml
The sitemap’s URL on deployed site will be like this: https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml
or https://foobar.on.getshifter.io/sitemap.xml
XML Sitemap Index generated by Google XML Sitemaps plugin on deployed site:
![](/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/93252921-732c020405478eb087df7086.png)
That’s all!
The search engine’s crawler will now access the XML Sitemap through robots.txt.