Squarespace's Automatic Sitemap: What It Includes, and How to Submit It

Squarespace builds a sitemap automatically at yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml, updates it whenever you publish or remove content, and excludes disabled pages, pages hidden from search, and password-protected pages on its own - but you still have to submit it to Google Search Console yourself. There's no setup step to generate it and no way to hand-edit it afterward. Here's exactly what it covers, what it leaves out, and how to submit it, sourced from Squarespace's own help center, checked September 2026.

Does Squarespace generate a sitemap automatically?

Yes, with no configuration required. It sits at a fixed address: https://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml for a custom domain, or https://sitename.squarespace.com/sitemap.xml on the built-in domain (Squarespace, "View your site map", checked September 2026). One requirement worth knowing: your site has to be set to Public. A private or password-protected site's sitemap won't load at that address the way a public site's does.

Updates happen on their own, on a short delay: "When you add or remove site content, we automatically update your sitemap," and per the same article, "these updates usually appear within an hour, though can take up to 24 hours." If you just published or unpublished something and the sitemap hasn't caught up yet, that delay - not a broken feature - is the likely explanation.

What does the sitemap actually include?

Per Squarespace's help center, the file contains "URLs for all pages on your site," along with image metadata, pages placed in dropdown navigation, and content on pages nested within index pages (same source). In practice, that means your published layout pages and your collection items - blog posts, products, portfolio projects, and the rest - all get a line in the file as long as nothing else is hiding them.

What does it exclude?

Squarespace's own sitemap article lists what stays out, and three of those exclusions matter most when you are deciding what to publish: disabled pages, pages hidden from search, and password-protected pages. If you've used the per-page setting in a page's SEO settings that hides it from search results, or password-protected a page or your whole site, that content stays out of the sitemap the same way it stays out of search results. The article also states you "can't edit the sitemap or a page's source code" - there's no manual override if you want a page added or removed outside of changing its actual visibility setting.

This lines up with the same setting used to keep a site or page out of search results generally. Our Squarespace SEO settings guide covers exactly where that per-page toggle and the site-wide "Block Search engine crawlers" checkbox live, if hiding a page - not just keeping it out of the sitemap - is the actual goal.

How do I submit the sitemap to Google?

Squarespace generates the file, but submitting it is a separate, manual step through Google Search Console. Squarespace's own guide to verifying a site with Search Console walks through it directly: connect your Search Console account to your Squarespace site first, then on the Search Console dashboard, select your site from the property menu, go to the Sitemaps section, enter your sitemap URL under "Add a new sitemap," and submit (Squarespace, "Verifying your site with Google Search Console", checked September 2026). The same article frames the purpose plainly: "By submitting a site map, you provide Search Console with your site's publicly available page URLs and image metadata."

A "Couldn't fetch" or similar error right after submitting isn't necessarily a sign of a real problem - Google can take time to process a newly submitted sitemap before it reports a clean status. Give it a day or two before assuming the submission failed.

What can I not do with the sitemap?

A short list, all confirmed on Squarespace's own pages:

• You can't edit the file by hand. The sitemap article states directly that you "can't edit the sitemap or a page's source code."
• You can't add a page to it without making that page indexable. The only lever is the page's own visibility and search-hiding settings, not a sitemap override.
• Squarespace won't submit it to Google for you. Generating the file and getting it in front of Google's crawler are two separate jobs; the second one is on you, through Search Console.
• A private or password-protected site's sitemap won't behave like a public one's. Set the site to Public first if you want the sitemap address to actually load.

A quick submission checklist

• Confirm your site is set to Public, not private or password-protected.
• Visit yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml yourself and confirm it loads and lists the pages you expect.
• Check that any page you want excluded actually has the hide-from-search setting turned on, or is password-protected - that's the only way to keep it out.
• Connect Google Search Console to your Squarespace site, then submit the sitemap URL under the Sitemaps report.
• Wait a day or two before treating a "Couldn't fetch" message as a real error.

What if my site still isn't showing up in Google after this?

Submitting a correct sitemap doesn't guarantee indexing on its own - it's one input into a process Google controls. If pages still aren't appearing after the sitemap is submitted and confirmed, that's usually a separate visibility or crawling issue rather than anything about the sitemap file itself. Our guide to why builder sites don't show up on Google covers the specific Squarespace visibility settings to check next, plus the Search Console tools - like the URL Inspection tool - that tell you what Google actually sees on a given page, instead of guessing from the sitemap alone.

Where does Figment fit in?

Nowhere directly - Figment publishes Figma designs as sites through its Figma plugin and isn't a CMS with its own sitemap-generation settings to compare against Squarespace's. This guide is about getting the most out of Squarespace's own sitemap and Search Console tools while you're on the platform, not a reason to move off it.

Bottom line: Squarespace's sitemap generation, updates, and content exclusions (disabled, hidden, and password-protected pages) are genuinely automatic and require no setup. Submitting that sitemap to Google Search Console, and controlling exactly which pages appear in it through visibility settings, are the two things that still need you to act - the file itself can't be hand-edited either way.