Glossary
What is Sitemap?
A sitemap is a file that lists the pages of a site you want search engines to find, often with the date each last changed.
Updated
An XML sitemap is a file, usually at /sitemap.xml, that lists your site's important URLs. It helps search engines discover pages, especially new ones or ones with few links to them.
What it contains
Each entry has a <loc> (the URL) and, optionally, a <lastmod> date. Search engines use lastmod when it is accurate; they ignore priority and changefreq.
Good practice
- List only indexable, canonical URLs that return a 200.
- Keep
lastmodhonest: only change it when the page really changed. - For large sites, use a sitemap index that points to several smaller sitemaps, one per kind of page. Each file can hold up to 50,000 URLs.
- Reference it in robots.txt and submit it in Search Console.
A sitemap helps discovery but doesn't guarantee a page will be indexed.
Build one with the free XML sitemap generator.
Related
- XML sitemap generatorPaste a list of URLs and get a valid sitemap.xml, with optional last-modified dates.
- robots.txtrobots.txt is a text file at the root of a site that tells crawlers which paths they may or may not fetch. It controls crawling, not indexing.
- IndexingIndexing is when a search engine stores a page in its database so it can appear in results. A page that isn't indexed can't rank.