Submitting Blogger sitemap via Google Webmaster

What is a site map?

Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional information about each URL: when it was last updated, how often it changes, and how important it is in relation to other URLs in the site.

Why do you need to submit a sitemap?

Sitemaps allow you to inform search engines about pages on your blogs that are available for crawling. This allows search engines to crawl the blog more intelligently.



Google says:
"Google uses your Sitemap to learn about the structure of your site and to increase our coverage of your webpages. Submit a Sitemap to tell Google about pages on your site we might not otherwise discover."

So, if some of your posts have not been indexed by Google i.e. they don’t show up in Google search, submitting a proper sitemap might be the answer.

How do you make a sitemap?
You don’t have to, it’s already there. In Blogger, your blog sitemap is your post feed, located here:

http://yourblog.blogspot.com/atom.xml

and here:

http://yourblog.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

How do you submit a sitemap?

• You go to Google Webmasters Tools homepage and sign in to your Google account.
• Click on your chosen blog to go to the blog’s Dashboard.
• Navigate to Traffic > Optimization > Sitemaps and click ADD/TEST SITEMAP button.
• When an input box appears, enter atom.xml, append the necessary parameters and then click Submit Sitemap button.

Related query parameters (to be appended to your feed URL):

1. max-results –add this if your blog has more than 25 posts. This is because on its own, the default feed URL only fetches 25 of your latest posts. To be safe use max-results=500 since Blogger allows up to 500 number of posts per feed.
2. redirect=false -if you use FeedBurner to manage your blog feed, you probably had set your feed to redirect to FeedBurner’s URL. To make the sitemap work you need to stop the redirection.
3. How to append the query parameters?
   First append a question mark, then add the parameters. Separate each parameter with an ampersand (&). Example:
   
   atom.xml?max-results=500&redirect=false

• Google will take a few hours to process your submission before the status changes from Pending to OK.

Enjoy!