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I use WordPress for most of my projects and I typically submit the "mysite.com/sitemap_index.xml" to Google Search Console but noticed that Posts on a couple of sites weren't being noticed and indexed very quickly, if ever, so I am wondering if submitting the "mysite.com/post-sitemap.xml" might help? I'm not getting any errors, warnings, or penalties, all 100% original and valid content.

I know that Google says they recognize them all when we submit the "sitemap_index.xml" but is there any harm or benefit to submitting the specific "post-sitemap.xml" site map? Will it possibly allow Google to pay attention to it more on a site that has frequent posts that aren't getting indexed in a reasonable amount of time?

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Neither positives nor negatives will result from that action. In both cases, they will be crawled if those XML files are valid. The reason for not being indexed should be sought elsewhere. Without more details, I couldn't say anything, but I would recommend this article as a good start: Why is my page missing from Google Search?

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There's no harm no foul in submitting your individual sitemap files. I submit everything just in case, including feed(s).

google search console list of submitted sitemaps

I always submit RSS feeds - about a year ago I ran some experiments around RSS feeds and noticed that in the presence of both /post-sitemap.xml and /feed/ Google prefers to read /feed/.

For example, you can see in the screenshot above my post sitemap was last read on the 24th, while my RSS feed was last read on the 30th along with the rest of my sitemaps including the index.

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  • I have no sitemaps at all yet every page of all the sites I've ever designed are fully indexed from theatre companies to restaurants. I find sitemaps pointless and useless for web sites that are well configured and linked.
    – Rob
    Jan 5, 2022 at 0:31
  • @Rob You're not wrong. They aren't really necessary unless a site has like 30k+ pages. I just do it anyway because it's easy and why not.
    – Mike Ciffone
    Feb 3, 2022 at 13:04
  • Because your time can be more productive doing something else that matters more.
    – Rob
    Feb 3, 2022 at 19:04
  • Most of the sites I work on or build are done in WordPress so the sitemaps are done automatically. It would be more work to tell an SEO plugin to stop generating a sitemap. I would not maintain sitemaps on a static website.
    – Mike Ciffone
    Feb 3, 2022 at 21:54

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