{"id":8694,"date":"2026-11-01T09:42:23","date_gmt":"2026-11-01T02:42:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adtek.agency\/glossary\/xml-sitemap\/"},"modified":"2026-11-01T09:42:23","modified_gmt":"2026-11-01T02:42:23","slug":"xml-sitemap","status":"publish","type":"mona_glossary","link":"https:\/\/adtek.agency\/en\/glossary\/xml-sitemap\/","title":{"rendered":"XML sitemap"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An XML sitemap is a file, written in XML, that lists the URLs, videos and images on a website and the relationships between them, so search engines like Google can crawl the site more efficiently. XML is the most common and most versatile sitemap format.<\/p>\n<h2>What is an XML sitemap?<\/h2>\n<p>According to Google, a sitemap tells search engines which pages and files you think are important, along with information such as when a page was last updated and its alternate language versions. A sitemap can also describe videos (running time, rating), images and news. It helps Google discover URLs, but it does not guarantee that every item in it will be crawled and indexed (<a href=\"https:\/\/developers.google.com\/search\/docs\/crawling-indexing\/sitemaps\/overview\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Google Search Central, What is a sitemap, accessed November 2026<\/a>).<\/p>\n<h2>Which sites need a sitemap?<\/h2>\n<p>Google says you may need a sitemap when:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Your site is large, so it is hard to make sure every page is linked from another page.<\/li>\n<li>Your site is new and has few external links, so Googlebot may not find your pages.<\/li>\n<li>Your site has lots of video or image content, or appears in Google News.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>You may not need one if your site is small (about 500 pages or fewer), internal links reach every important page from the home page, and you do not have many videos, images or news pages to show in search. WordPress, Wix and Blogger usually generate a sitemap already.<\/p>\n<h2>What goes into an XML sitemap<\/h2>\n<p>Under the sitemaps.org protocol, the file must open with a &lt;urlset&gt; tag, each URL sits in a &lt;url&gt; tag, and each &lt;url&gt; has a &lt;loc&gt; child with the page address. All other tags are optional. All URLs in one sitemap must come from a single host (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sitemaps.org\/protocol.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">sitemaps.org, Sitemaps XML format, accessed November 2026<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>Google ignores &lt;priority&gt; and &lt;changefreq&gt;. It uses &lt;lastmod&gt; only if the value is consistently and verifiably accurate. &lt;lastmod&gt; should reflect the last significant update to the page, such as changes to the main content, structured data or links (<a href=\"https:\/\/developers.google.com\/search\/docs\/crawling-indexing\/sitemaps\/build-sitemap\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Google Search Central, Build and submit a sitemap, accessed November 2026<\/a>).<\/p>\n<h2>Limits and rules<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Each file holds at most 50MB (uncompressed) or 50,000 URLs. Beyond that, split into several sitemaps, optionally grouped with a sitemap index file.<\/li>\n<li>Use UTF-8 encoding and fully qualified absolute URLs (https:\/\/www.example.com\/page\/), not \/page\/.<\/li>\n<li>Host the sitemap at the site root so it applies to the whole site.<\/li>\n<li>Include only URLs you want in search results. If several URLs carry the same content, list only the one you chose as canonical.<\/li>\n<li>The order of URLs in the file does not matter.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Besides XML, Google accepts RSS, mRSS and Atom 1.0 sitemaps and plain text files with one URL per line (same Build and submit a sitemap source).<\/p>\n<h2>How to submit a sitemap to Google<\/h2>\n<ol>\n<li>Submit it in the Sitemaps report in <a href=\"\/en\/glossary\/google-search-console\/\">Google Search Console<\/a>. This shows when Googlebot read the file and any processing errors.<\/li>\n<li>Add a line such as &#8220;Sitemap: https:\/\/www.example.com\/sitemap.xml&#8221; to your robots.txt file. Google picks it up the next time it crawls robots.txt.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Submitting a sitemap is only a hint; Google does not promise to download it or use it for crawling.<\/p>\n<h2>Example: splitting sitemaps for a large shop (hypothetical)<\/h2>\n<p>A shop has 60,000 product pages and 400 category pages. Because of the 50,000 URL limit, it splits them into 3 files: products part 1 (50,000 URLs), products part 2 (10,000 URLs) and categories (400 URLs), then groups them in one sitemap index to submit once. Search Console reports 48,000 of 60,400 URLs indexed, about 79%. Splitting by page type shows straight away which group is under-indexed.<\/p>\n<h2>Frequently asked questions<\/h2>\n<h3>Will a sitemap push my site to the top?<\/h3>\n<p>No. A sitemap helps Google find URLs; it does not make pages rank higher. Rankings depend on content, links and many other <a href=\"\/en\/glossary\/seo\/\">SEO<\/a> factors.<\/p>\n<h3>Should every small edit update lastmod?<\/h3>\n<p>No. Google&#8217;s own example: updating the copyright date in the footer is not a significant change. Bumping lastmod for every minor edit makes the value less trustworthy.<\/p>\n<h3>Does the sitemap control the title and description shown on Google?<\/h3>\n<p>No. The title and snippet in search results come from the title element, the page content and the <a href=\"\/en\/glossary\/meta-description\/\">meta description<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>If you need a review of your sitemaps, indexing and technical SEO, see Adtek&#8217;s <a href=\"\/en\/solution\/seo\/\">SEO solution<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An XML sitemap is a file, written in XML, that lists the URLs, videos and images on a website and the relationships between them, so search engines like Google can crawl the site more efficiently. XML is the most common and most versatile sitemap format. What is an XML sitemap? According to Google, a sitemap [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_title":"XML Sitemap: What It Is, Limits and How to Submit It","_yoast_wpseo_metadesc":"What is an XML sitemap? A file that helps Google find your URLs. 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