Will google index beyond a sitemap?

I have a question..if I submit a sitemapwhich is not updated, and the site content keeps growing - will google index the new pages even though they are not available in the sitemap?

Looking forward hearing from you.

 

As long as the bot can reach the pages that have been updated and are within two clicks.

Its better if you can update the sitemap when a page is added or at least have an html sitemap.

 

Google has been indexing pages for (wow!) 2 years shy of a decade without using sitemaps. They will continue to pick up pages not included in a sitemap.

The sitemap is a faster means of injecting your pages into Google and a way to limit the amount of necessary bandwidth based on what was updated recently (lastmod) and when it will likely be updated again (changefreq). It also allows you to tell Google that if they only have time for a few pages on this crawl... these are the ones they should grab (priority).

Sitemaps are a way to get listed quickly and efficiently, but it's not the only means into their system. For the most efficient spidering... sitemaps are the only way... well, that and having support for the If-Modified-Since HTTP headers.

Speaking of which... if anyone wants a copy of my PHP script that supports last-mod and if-modified-since headers, please PM me. It's not the most robust script in the world, but it works under certain conditions and can be custom tweaked if you need it work a little differently.