Google Search submission packet

Getaway Brief Google Search Submission Packet

Status date: 2026-06-22

Status: static site ready for Google Search Console sitemap submission; Search Console property ownership/submission is a site-owner approval and credential gate.

Submit these URLs

• Canonical site: https://getawaybrief.com/
• XML sitemap: https://getawaybrief.com/sitemap.xml
• XML image sitemap: https://getawaybrief.com/sitemap-images.xml
• Robots file: https://getawaybrief.com/robots.txt
• Guide index: https://getawaybrief.com/articles/
• Trust center: https://getawaybrief.com/trust.html
• Affiliate disclosure: https://getawaybrief.com/affiliate-disclosure.html
• Privacy policy: https://getawaybrief.com/privacy.html
• Editorial policy: https://getawaybrief.com/editorial-policy.html

Static SEO checks already in place

• Final canonical domain is https://getawaybrief.com.
• robots.txt allows crawling and points to both the absolute XML sitemap and the image sitemap.
• sitemap.xml uses absolute https://getawaybrief.com/... URLs with <lastmod> populated per article from each article's last_updated field.
• sitemap-images.xml uses Google's image-sitemap extension to surface licensed editorial imagery for Google Image Search.
• Article pages include canonical tags, Open Graph metadata, Twitter card metadata, article schema, and FAQ schema.
• Current static build includes 38 guide pages and 136 generated HTML pages.
• Homepage, article index, cluster pages, trust pages, /llms.txt, /agents.txt, and /agents.json are generated in the static build.
• No Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager markers are present; approved analytics remains self-hosted Umami.
• Live affiliate links and partner IDs remain disabled until program approval.

Google Search Console submission steps

1. Open Google Search Console with the account the site owner wants tied to Getaway Brief.
2. Add a Domain property for getawaybrief.com when possible; URL-prefix property https://getawaybrief.com/ is acceptable if DNS verification is inconvenient.
3. Verify ownership through Cloudflare DNS TXT record or the site-owner-approved method.
4. In Sitemaps, submit: https://getawaybrief.com/sitemap.xml. Optionally also submit https://getawaybrief.com/sitemap-images.xml.
5. Use URL Inspection for the homepage and 3-5 representative guide URLs, then request indexing if available.
6. Recheck after Google processes the sitemap for discovered URLs, crawl/indexing warnings, duplicate canonical issues, and page-experience/mobile warnings.

IndexNow submission (Bing, Yandex, DuckDuckGo, Seznam, Naver)

IndexNow is the joint indexer for Bing/Yandex/DuckDuckGo/Seznam/Naver. Submitting after each build tells those engines the content is fresh.

1. Generate an API key once: python3 -c "import secrets; print(secrets.token_hex(16))"
2. Store the key in the Hermes env as INDEXNOW_API_KEY (or in a .env file at ~/.hermes/.env).
3. Host a flat file at https://getawaybrief.com/<key>.txt containing just the key string. This verifies domain ownership to IndexNow.
4. The submitter script scripts/submit_indexnow.py reads the sitemap and POSTs the URL list. Run it after each build:

   INDEXNOW_API_KEY=<key> python3 scripts/submit_indexnow.py

1. Response codes: 200 = accepted, 202 = accepted (key pending verification), 400 = bad payload. Treat any 4xx as a real failure to investigate.

Representative URLs to inspect first

• https://getawaybrief.com/articles/weekend-trips-from-nyc-without-a-car.html
• https://getawaybrief.com/articles/where-to-stay-near-zion-without-a-car.html
• https://getawaybrief.com/articles/things-to-do-in-gatlinburg-when-it-rains.html
• https://getawaybrief.com/articles/dog-friendly-weekend-trips-from-atlanta.html
• https://getawaybrief.com/articles/warm-weekend-trips-from-chicago-in-march.html

Approval boundary

The agent can keep generating, validating, and deploying static SEO files. The agent must not use the site owner Google account, create/verify Search Console properties, submit under the site owner identity, add DNS verification records, or connect Google services without explicit approval.