Frequently Asked Questions

Hawk JS is a tool for generating and deploying sitemaps and update content link to search engines for websites. It supports automatic submission to search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, and others, ensuring your website content is indexed quickly and efficiently.

You can install Hawk JS using npm or yarn. Run npm install @cresteem/hawk-js or yarn add @cresteem/hawk-js in your project directory.

You can configure Hawk JS by creating a hawk.config.json file in the root directory of your project. This file includes settings such as lookup patterns, ignore patterns, timezone, domain name, sitemap path, robot path, and secret file.

Hawk JS supports submission to multiple search engines, including Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, and others that support the IndexNow protocol.

Lookup patterns specify the files to be included when generating the sitemap, while ignore patterns specify the files to be excluded. These patterns help customize which parts of your website are indexed.

The Google Indexing API strategy is ideal for sites with frequently changing content, such as job postings or live stream events. This strategy allows you to notify Google directly when pages are added or removed, ensuring timely updates to search results.

You can generate a sitemap by running the Hawk JS CLI command hawk genmap. This will create a sitemap.xml file based on your configuration settings.

Yes, you can exclude certain files from the sitemap by specifying ignore patterns in the hawk.config.json file. These patterns will be used to filter out files that should not be included in the sitemap.

The getLastRunTimeStamp function retrieves the timestamp of the last execution or submission. This is useful for filtering updated routes from non-updated routes using the lastRunTimeStamp.

To use the IndexNow strategy, configure your routes and run hawk with the IndexNow strategy. This will rapidly index your new or updated content with search engines that support IndexNow, such as Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, and Yep.

The Google Search Console API is used for submitting sitemaps to Google and checking their status, while the Google Indexing API is specifically for notifying Google about updates to pages with certain types of content, like job postings or live stream events.

Yes, you can check the status of your sitemap submissions to Google Search Console using the lastSubmissionStatusGAPI function provided by Hawk JS. This function retrieves and displays the status of the last submission.

To generate and upload a sitemap using the CLI, run hawk genmap -c. This will generate the sitemap and upload it to Google Search Console.

Hawk JS supports several strategies for sitemap generation and submission: IndexNow, GIndex, GWebmaster, and GWebmaster2. Each strategy serves different purposes based on your content and target search engines.

Hawk JS identifies routes with changes since the last submission timestamp using given inclusion and exclusion patterns. This ensures only updated content is submitted for indexing.

You can update the sitemap without uploading it by setting the donotUpload option to true in your configuration or CLI command. This will generate the sitemap but skip the upload step.

The makeRobot function generates a robots.txt file that helps search engines understand which parts of your site should be crawled and indexed.

Yes, Hawk JS can be used with any website, As long as you have node-js environment and can configure the necessary settings and run the CLI commands, Hawk JS will work for your site.

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) credentials such as hostname, username, and password are required when using gWebmaster or gWebmaster2 strategies in Hawk JS to submit the sitemap directly to FTP server for Google Search Console to utillise and index your website.

FTP credentials should be securely stored in the secrets.json file should be located in your project's root directory. This file is used by Hawk JS(yarn hawk secret) to set credentials to system environment so that can used when need to access and authenticate with the FTP server when uploading the sitemap.

A Google service account key is required for GIndex and GWebmaster strategies in Hawk JS to authenticate and access the Google APIs for indexing and sitemap submission. This key ensures secure communication between Hawk JS and Google services.

You can acquire a Google service account key from the Google Cloud Console. Navigate to the IAM & Admin section, select Service accounts, and create a new service account. Download the JSON key file provided, which contains your service account credentials. It should be stored as gserv.json in project root directory.

Yes, you need to enable specific APIs such as the Google Indexing API and Google Search Console API in the Google Cloud Console for Hawk JS to interact with these services. Ensure that the required APIs are enabled and access permissions are correctly configured.