<b>Declare the sitemap in robots.txt</b>

<b>Declare the sitemap in robots.txt</b>

GSC submission covers Google. The robots.txt <code>Sitemap:</code> line covers every other crawler that never sees your Search Console.

Rules:
— ✅ Use an absolute URL: <code>Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml</code>.
— ✅ Point to the index, not individual children.
— ✅ The directive is host-independent — placement anywhere in the file is valid.
— ✅ You may list multiple <code>Sitemap:</code> lines.

Checklist:
Step 1 — Add the absolute-URL directive to robots.txt.
Step 2 — Confirm the URL it names returns 200, not a redirect.
Step 3 — Verify the sitemap URL itself is NOT disallowed elsewhere in the file.

Threshold: <code>curl robots.txt</code> shows the line; the named URL loads directly.

Definition of done: every crawler can discover the sitemap without GSC access.