Will Googlebot automatically attempt to index sitemap.xml?

Question

Will Googlebot automatically attempt to index sitemap.xml if my sitemap.xml file wasn't submitted to Google? For example, will Googlebot attempt to index http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml if by chance the file is there?

Google's resource say to submit, but what Googlebot does is a separate question. http://support.google.com/sites/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=100283

Answer 1

Sitemap file can have any name and path. So, I don't think that google will look for it, if it is not explicitly specified in robots.txt.

User-agent: *
Sitemap: sitemap.xml