{"id":162176,"date":"2026-06-30T11:54:55","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T15:54:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/tech\/?page_id=162176"},"modified":"2026-08-24T12:01:27","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T16:01:27","slug":"xml-sitemaps","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/tech\/services\/cccs\/websites\/www\/wordpress\/how-to\/xml-sitemaps\/","title":{"rendered":"XML Sitemaps"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>WordPress automatically produces a sitemap that lists all the published pages and posts on your site. Google and other robots will explore your site even without a map, but with a map they&#8217;re guaranteed to find every page.<\/p>\n<div class=\"highlight-yellow\">**PLEASE NOTE: The XML sitemap lists <strong>all published content.<\/strong>. De-linking content or turning off visibility may hide it from your navigation menus, but it will still appear in your sitemap if it is <em>published<\/em>. Any content that you do not want listed in your XML sitemap should be un-published (convert to draft) or deleted.<\/div>\n<h2>Configure Sitemap Settings<\/h2>\n<p>From your WordPress dashboard, visit <strong>Settings<\/strong> : <strong>XML Sitemaps<\/strong>. If you have custom post types on your site that you do not want to list in your sitemap, uncheck the boxes for those post types. These settings do not make your content private! Robots can and will still crawl content they find via links. You&#8217;re just indicating that some types of content are not relevant for listing on a sitemap.<\/p>\n<p><strong>This configuration page also contains the URL for your site&#8217;s XML sitemap.<\/strong><\/p>\n<h2>Submitting Your Sitemap to Google<\/h2>\n<p>If you haven&#8217;t already, setup <a href=\"\/tech\/services\/cccs\/web\/www\/how-to\/google-search-console\/\">Google Search Console<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Under the\u00a0<strong>Indexing<\/strong> menu, select\u00a0<strong>Sitemaps<\/strong>. Paste the URL for your site&#8217;s sitemap (copied from the settings page). Click <strong>Submit<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<h2>Submitting Your Sitemap to Bing<\/h2>\n<p>If you haven&#8217;t already, setup <a href=\"\/tech\/services\/cccs\/web\/www\/how-to\/google-search-console\/\">Google Search Console<\/a>. (Yes, Google! Bing will work automatically after setting up Google first.)<\/p>\n<p>Sign in to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bing.com\/webmasters\">Bing Webmaster Tools<\/a> using your Google account. If needed, add a new property. Bing will let you import your sites from &#8220;GSC&#8221; (that&#8217;s Google Search Console) automatically. As long as you&#8217;ve already got Google setup, this will just work automatically.<\/p>\n<p>Select\u00a0<strong>Sitemaps<\/strong> from the main menu. Click\u00a0<strong>Submit Sitemap<\/strong> in the upper right. Enter the URL for your site&#8217;s sitemap (copied from the settings page above). Click\u00a0<strong>Submit<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<h2>Watch a Tutorial<\/h2>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"XML Sitemaps for BU WordPress Sites: How to Configure and Submit to Search Engines\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/pHuWJRFbUZU?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1&#038;origin=https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/tech\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WordPress automatically produces a sitemap that lists all the published pages and posts on your site. Google and other robots will explore your site even without a map, but with a map they&#8217;re guaranteed to find every page. **PLEASE NOTE: The XML sitemap lists all published content.. De-linking content or turning off visibility may hide&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1130,"featured_media":0,"parent":304,"menu_order":57,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/162176"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1130"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162176"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/162176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":162861,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/162176\/revisions\/162861"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}