I just signed up for an account on google's webmaster tools. I was wondering if using that to submit a site map is better in the long run or just general information on how they do things with this.
Your sitemap will be accepted pretty fast, but the rest of the system - rankings, in particular - are very slow and thus inaccurate for the most of the time
I noticed some of the site maps like you said got accepted pretty quick. How long does it take google to go and index these though.
Another weird thing I noticed is when I try submitting site maps today it seems to take over 12 hours and it is still on pending, while yesterday my site maps were downloaded with in 10min. Is there a reason for this or is it just longer today?
Sometimes, Google downloads the sitemap every couple of hours and sometimes might do that once every 24 hours. It depends upon some factors like the number of pages added.
they will accept your sitemap in the same or one day later and the other parts is related with the power of your backlinks