I’m using Ghost 3 and the sitemap is being created successfully. However, what’s the best way to ping Google to let it know the sitemap has changed please?
Thanks,
Matt
Hey @mattie, the best way to submit your sitemap to Google is by adding your site to Google Search console. It’ll let you submit your site for crawling ant time you want and will give more information on how well your site is indexing
https://search.google.com/search-console/
Hi @DavidDarnes thanks for your reply. I’ve added the sitemap to Google Search Console but I believe the recommendation from Google is that when the sitemap is updated the site should ping Google to let it know. This allows new content to be indexed very quickly by Google.
The process is to ping: http://www.google.com/ping?sitemap=URL/of/file
It’s mentioned in Google’s docs here: Google에 웹사이트 재크롤링 요청하기 | Google 검색 센터 | 문서 | Google Developers
I guess Ghost is not automatically pinging Google so I wondered what the recommended approach would be to have Google pinged each time the sitemap is updated?
Thanks,
Matt
You could create your own integration that pings the Google indexing URL 
Head over to Integrations in Ghost admin and create a new Integration. Next create a new webhook using the Event ‘Site changed’ with the Target URL as the Google indexing URL. Check out the screenshot below:
Head over to our docs for more info on how to create custom integrations:
3 Likes
This seems interesting.
is this procedure really useful?
Google should crawl the site every day I believe.
Need only to decrease the scan time?
Not sure I’d recommend requesting to crawl it every day. Especially if there is no change in content? I believe crawler bots will be less likely to return to crawl your site if they come back and see no changes.
Well it actually doesn’t make sense to request crawling if the content hasn’t changed.
So do you recommend setting up this procedure you suggested?
Isn’t it better to wait for bots to scan without forcing them?
It might not be. This is why I originally suggested only adding it to Google Search Console. There you can periodically submit it for indexing. Eventually crawler bots will understand how regularly you post and keep coming back to crawl new content.
I would recommend the technique I suggested if you’re really keen to get your content indexed, but personally I’d just make sure to keep an eye on it in Search Console 
3 Likes
I don’t think anyone suggested pinging Google when there are no changes to the content. The whole point of this is to ping google when content changes.
If that was the case you could continuously ping Google for a competitor site and it would be less likely to return to it 
This is another reason why I think submitting your site to Google every time there’s a change has little benefit, and that using Search Console is a better solution 