Best location and URL of XML Sitemaps for your website.

[cricketer]

Hello all,

I've searched the web for a discussion in forums or even a blog and found very little to help me answer the question in this case.

Eager to know if submitting this sort of a URL to Google Webmaster Tools will get Google to not "show" indexed pages in GWT.

All URLs in this sitemap have been successfully submitted to the web and all have been crawled when checking using a site: command.

However the area in GWT where it shows "Submitted" and "Indexed" is only showing what's being submitted to Google.

Is this a bug for the account within GWT?

Or do I need to verify this long URL in GWT http://subdomain.subdomain.subdomain.actualdomainname.com/

in order for this XML sitemap to be indexed

http://subdomain.subdomain.subdomain.actualdomainname.com/sitemap.xml

The website is on www.actualdomainname.com however the XML sitemap is on http://subdomain.subdomain.subdomain.actualdomainname.com/sitemap.xml

So the question is the www.actualdomainname.com verified in GWT while http://subdomain.subdomain.subdomain.actualdomainname.com/ is not so that the offending issue.

Thanks in advance

[edited by: aakk9999 at 10:23 am (utc) on Apr 16, 2014]
[edit reason] Unlinked examples [/edit]

[seoholic]

When only www.actualdomainname.com is verified, that doesn't include subdomain.actualdomainname.com at all, since "subdomain" and "www" are two different subdomains.
Even if you verify actualdomainname.com without any subdomain, the interface would only allow you to submit a sitemap on the current (in that case nonexisting) subdomain.
I don't know if the sitemap must be on the same subdomain the other files are, but I doubt that you can get the indexation information of the domain if the sitemap is on the subdomain.

[lucy24]

Same principle as robots.txt. The entire hostname should be identical.

The topic header makes it sound as if you're asking where to put the physical sitemap.xml file. But that wasn't the question was it?

[cricketer]

@seoholic, your explanation is clear and to the point. Do Google generally provide a support notes for best practice?

@lucy24, yeah agree that robots.txt and sitemap.xml both do need to placed under a verified domain name. Oh yes the title can more descriptive agreed.

[seoholic]

[support.google.com...]
[sitemaps.org...]

[cricketer]

Thank you @seoholic!