Just because an XML sitemap has been created, doesn’t necessarily mean search engines like Google know where to find it. For 100% certainty, it’s best to submit the website sitemap to Google so it knows where to look.

To do this, log into your Google Search Console account and go to Sitemaps section to submit the URL of your XML sitemap or sitemap index file.

Informing search engines where to look for the sitemap can speed up the process of Google discovering your sitemap, which will improve crawling and indexing performance.