Doesn’t Google find new pages on its own?
Eventually, through links and your sitemap. On a newer or larger site that can take days or weeks, and some pages sit as discovered but not crawled. Submitting each page when it goes live gets Googlebot to it now, and you get a report on whether it was indexed.
How often does the sitemap watch check?
Every six hours, or straight away when you choose Check now. Pages already in the sitemap when you start are recorded and not sent unless you choose them, so turning it on does not resubmit your whole site.
Will automatic submission spend credits without asking?
Only if you turn on Submit new URLs automatically for a sitemap. Each read then sends at most your limit (100 by default). If one read finds more, for example after a site move, those URLs wait for you. Every URL goes through the checks before sending and uses a credit only if it is sent.
What happens if CI submits a page that is not live yet?
Each URL is opened before it is sent. Error pages, redirects, and noindex pages are skipped and not charged, and the skip reason is in the job. Trigger the step after your production deploy succeeds, as in the GitHub Actions example, and you will rarely see it.
Can a retry in CI charge me twice?
Not if you send the same Idempotency-Key header with the API, or pass the CLI request ID back with --request-id. A repeated request returns the original job. A URL that is still in progress from an earlier job is also skipped without charge.
How do I know it worked?
We check every URL once after 24 hours. Your full report follows around day 5, with final checks around day 14. Each job shows every URL with its status in the app, the API, the CLI, and over MCP. A URL confirmed as not indexed after the final check gets its standard credit back.