Technically, listing your URLs in an XML sitemap file is not required to rank in Google, but it can make your URLs more discoverable by search engines and, in some cases, aid crawling and even ranking if it's never been crawled, it won't rank.
It is a best practice to list all indexable URLs in an XML sitemap or multiple sitemap files.
The location of the sitemap file defined in robotsxt
You've confirmed that your URLs are listed in your XML sitemap. Next, you want to make sure that search engines all search engines can easily find your sitemap file.
The easiest and most straightforward approach is to simply belgium mobile database list your sitemap location in your robotsxt file. Placing your sitemap here works for all major search engines without any additional work. The downside to this approach is that it may expose your sitemap to third-party crawlers, so in some cases you may not want to use it and instead use direct search engine submissions.
Submitting sitemap files to search engines
Even if your sitemap is listed in your robotsxt file, you still need to make sure you submit your XML sitemap directly to search engines. This ensures that:
Search engines actually know your XML sitemap
Search engines will report whether they found the sitemap to be effective
Finally, you can get coverage reports from search engines with statistics on how they crawl and index the URLs found in your sitemap.
Both Bing and Google support direct sitemap submission. Google provides particular value in this regard because after you submit your sitemap, you can view Google's index coverage report for each sitemap you submit .