Outdated Confidence: high
Source found and quoted correctly, but old enough that the market has changed.
Safe rephrasing
Google retired its sitemap ping endpoint after a June 2023 announcement; pings now return 404, so submit sitemaps through robots.txt or Search Console instead.
What the source says
To wit, we're deprecating our support for sitemaps ping and the endpoint will stop functioning in 6 months. You can still submit your sitemaps through robots.txt and Search Console , but the HTTP requests ("pings") to the deprecated REST endpoint will result in a 404 error.
Google Search Central Blog — Sitemaps ping endpoint is going away (June 26, 2023)
- Commonly cited as
- "Ping Google when you update your sitemap"
- True origin
- Google Search Central Blog — Sitemaps ping endpoint is going away (June 26, 2023)
- Type
- Stat check: A widely repeated statistic traced back to its origin.
- Year
- Deprecated 2023
- Data as of
- Endpoint retired about six months after June 26, 2023
- Last checked
- Method & sample
- Official Google Search Central blog announcement.
- Drift between quote and source
- Superseded: Google retired the ping endpoint; submit sitemaps via robots.txt or Search Console
- Many SEO plugins and checklists still describe pinging
- Interest
- Google operates Google Search and documents its own systems.