WordPress plugin intelligence profile

XML Sitemap & Google News

Take control of your WordPress core XML Sitemap and add a Google News Sitemap.

WP PlugIndex snapshot

Current directory snapshot

Tested up to WordPress 7.0
Current version5.7.7
WordPress coverageTested up to WordPress 7.0
Minimum stackWP 4.4 · PHP 5.6
Directory statusactive
Last directory update10 Jun 20264mo ago
Active installations100K+Adoption metric — not a quality score
WordPress.org rating4.4 / 5 from 85 ratings
Official packageDirect from WordPress.org

Repository metrics are context, not quality scores. Active installations measure adoption and can strongly reflect a plugin’s age and historical popularity. Ratings, recent updates and “Tested up to” metadata also do not guarantee modern code, error-free operation, security, feature completeness or suitability for a particular site. Why active installs don’t tell the whole story →

WP PlugIndex currently records XML Sitemap & Google News version 5.7.7 as active, updated 4mo ago and tested up to WordPress 7.0.

Overview

About this plugin

Take control of your WordPress core XML Sitemap and add a Google News Sitemap. Compatible with WordPress Multisite, Polylang and WPML and most caching plugins. There are no static files created.

NEW: Connect your site to your Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools to keep an eye on sitemap performance and possible errors.

NEW: Submit your sitemaps right from the WordPress admin. Yes, you read that correctly: Sitemap Pings are back!

Features

  • Control the WordPress core XML Sitemaps.
  • Add a Google News Sitemap.
  • Connect your site to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools to keep an eye on sitemap performance and possible errors.
  • Submit/ping sitemaps to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools for fast reindexation.
  • Add custom robots.txt rules.

XML Sitemap

  • Option to disable the main XML Sitemap Index.
  • Select sitemaps to include in the sitemap index: post types, taxonomies, authors and google news.
  • Select which (custom) post types, taxonomy archives and users to include in respective sitemaps.
  • Exclude specific posts, pages and custom post type posts from sitemaps.
  • Add a custom sitemap with external URLs.
  • Add external sitemaps.
  • Choose the sitemap server/generator: WordPress core or Plugin.
  • Plugin server: Include featured images or attached images with title.
  • Choose to update Last modification date only on post modification (default) or also on comments.
  • Sitemap stylesheet templates can be overridden by theme template files.

Google News Sitemap

  • Optionally activate the Google News Sitemap.
  • Includes the required news sitemap tags: Publication name, language, title and publication date.
  • Set a News Publication Name (site name by default).
  • Supports custom post types.
  • Limit inclusion of certain post categories.
  • Google News Sitemap stylesheet template can be overridden by theme template files.

Pro Extensions

XML Sitemap Advanced

  • Sitemap notifier: Automatic XML Sitemap Index update notification to Google and Bing.
  • Sitemap notifier log
  • Set a custom sitemap URL (slug)
  • Exclude posts and pages in the Bulk Editor.
  • Optionally include empty taxonomy term and empty author archives
  • Yoast SEO and Rank Math compatibility: exclude posts set to noindex

Google News Advanced

  • Sitemap norifier: Automatic Google News Sitemap update notification to Google.
  • Sitemap notifier log
  • Multiple post types – Include more than one post type in the same News Sitemap.
  • Keywords – Add the keywords tag to your News Sitemap. Keywords can be created from Tags, Categories or a dedicated Keywords taxonomy.
  • Stock tickers – Add stock tickers tag to your News Sitemap. A dedicated Stock Tickers taxonomy will be available to manage them.

Privacy / GDPR

This plugin does not collect any user or visitor data nor set browser cookies. Using this plugin should not impact your site privacy policy in any way.

Data that is published

An XML Sitemap index, referencing other sitemaps containing your web site’s public post URLs of selected post types that are already public, along with their last modification date and associated image URLs, and any selected public archive URLs.

An author sitemap can be included, which will contain links to author archive pages. These urls contain author/user slugs, and the author archives can contain author bio information. If you wish to keep this out of public domain, then deactivate the author sitemap and use an SEO plugin to add noindex headers to the respective archive pages.

A Google News Sitemap containing your web site’s public and recent (last 48 hours) URLs of selected news post type, along with their publication time stamp and associated image URL.

Data that is transmitted

when a connection between your site and Google Search Console is configured in this plugin, the sitemap index and google news sitemap can be submitted to Google. No data is transmitted to any third party.

Contribute

If you’re happy with this plugin as it is, please consider writing a quick rating or helping other users out on the support forum.

If you wish to help build this plugin, you’re very welcome to translate it into your language or contribute code on Github.

Credits

XML Sitemap Feed was originally based on the discontinued plugin Standard XML Sitemap Generator by Patrick Chia. Since then, it has been completely rewritten and extended in many ways.

NOTES:

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txt will NOT be generated.

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On large sites, it is advised to use a good caching plugin to improve your site and sitemap performance.

WordPress.org metadata

Plugin tags

Topics listed for this plugin in the WordPress.org directory.

  • google news
  • robots
  • sitemap
  • xml
Compatibility & maintenance

Compatibility & maintenance

Tested up to WordPress 7.0

Not yet marked as tested with WordPress 7.1. WordPress.org currently lists Tested up to 7.0.

Current WordPress releaseWordPress 7.1
WordPress.org Tested up to7.0
Minimum requirementsWordPress 4.4 · PHP 5.6
Update activity10 Jun 20264mo ago

“Tested up to” is directory metadata supplied by the plugin author. WP PlugIndex does not turn an older declaration into a claim that the plugin is incompatible.

Changes recorded by WP PlugIndex

Recent tracked changes

No tracked version or compatibility changes have been recorded by WP PlugIndex yet.

Tracking & source

WP PlugIndex tracks public WordPress.org directory metadata and records selected version, compatibility and availability changes as they are detected.

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