Case: Stopped daily resubmits, crawl unchanged

Case: Stopped daily resubmits, crawl unchanged
A team resubmitted the sitemap in GSC every morning, believing it forced recrawl. We tested whether it mattered.
What we did:
— Stopped manual resubmits for one 28-day period
— Left lastmod accurate so Google detects changes itself
— Compared crawl stats before vs after in GSC Crawl Stats
Measured outcome:
— Sitemap fetch frequency by Google: unchanged (~once/24h)
— Recrawl of updated URLs: unchanged
— Manual labor saved: ~5 min/day
Rule:
✅ Submit a sitemap URL once
✅ Rely on accurate lastmod for change detection
✅ Resubmit only after structural changes to the index
Definition of done: sitemap submitted once; no recurring manual resubmit task exists.