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Submitting A Sitemap to Google Search Console

Submitting your sitemap to Google Search Console (GSC) is essential for maximizing your website’s visibility in Google Search results. This process helps Google efficiently discover and index important content on your website, including products, images, collections, and blog posts. GSC also provides valuable tools and reports to measure search traffic, diagnose indexing or crawling issues, and optimize your overall search performance.

This guide provides instructions on verifying ownership of your domain in Google Search Console and submitting your SHOPLINE online store’s sitemap.

 

 

Verifying Domain Ownership in Google Search Console

Before submitting your sitemap, you must first verify ownership of your website in Google Search Console. This ensures that Google can access and index your store’s pages. 

If you have not yet completed domain verification, follow the instructions below to verify your domain in Google Search Console:

Note: You must have a Google Account to sign in and use Google Search Console.

  1. Visit Google Search Console and click Start now.

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  2. Select URL prefix as the property type, enter your store’s full URL, then click CONTINUE.

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  3. In the Verify ownership pop-up, scroll to Other verification methods, choose HTML tag, and copy the code inside content="xxxxx".

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  4. In your SHOPLINE admin panel, go to Channels > Google. In the Domain verification section, click Confirm now.

  5. Click Add Meta tag.

  6. Paste the verification code you copied from Google Search Console and click Save.

  7. After adding the meta tag, go to Settings > Basic settings > Store status and confirm that your store status is Open. Google must be able to access your storefront for the verification to succeed.

  8. Return to Google Search Console and click VERIFY.

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  9. You will see an Ownership verified pop-up once your website has been successfully verified. Click Done to close the window.



     

 

Submitting the Sitemap of Your Store

A sitemap helps search engines understand the structure of your website. SHOPLINE automatically generates a sitemap for each store. You can access it at: "https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml".

Note: For more information about sitemaps, refer to Google’s "Learn about sitemaps" guide.

To submit your sitemap, follow these steps:

  1. In Google Search Console, select your site from the dropdown in the top-left corner and go to the Sitemaps section.

  2. In the Add a new sitemap section, enter sitemap.xml after your store’s domain, then click SUBMIT.

  3. You will see a success confirmation pop-up, and the sitemap will be marked as Success under Submitted sitemaps.

Note: Crawling and indexing are dynamic processes, and Google does not provide a fixed timeframe for completion. For more details or troubleshooting, refer to Google’s "Why is my page missing from Google Search?" guide.