Create, validate, and download XML sitemaps for your website β free and instant
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When You Need a Sitemap and How to Use It
What it does
`sitemap.xml` gives crawlers a list of your URLs (sitemaps.org protocol). It matters most when internal links alone won't surface everything: new sites, large sites, or structures with orphaned pages.
What each field actually does
`<loc>`: required, and must match the canonical URL exactly.
`<lastmod>`: Google uses it β but only if it's truthful. Fake daily-updated lastmod values teach Google to ignore yours.
`<priority>` and `<changefreq>`: effectively ignored by Google. Don't invest effort here.
Operational tips
Split into a sitemap index beyond 50,000 URLs or 50MB.
Submit via Search Console and verify the 'Success' status and discovered-page count.
Never include redirecting or noindexed URLs β they only waste crawl budget.
Frequently Asked Questions
An XML sitemap is a file that lists all the important URLs of your website to help search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo discover and crawl your pages. It follows the sitemap protocol defined at sitemaps.org and includes metadata like last modification date, change frequency, and priority.
Use this free online sitemap generator: enter your URLs one per line, set optional parameters like change frequency and priority, then click 'Download sitemap.xml'. Upload the file to your website's root directory and reference it in your robots.txt file.
According to the sitemap protocol, a single sitemap file can contain a maximum of 50,000 URLs and must not exceed 50MB (uncompressed). If you have more URLs, use a sitemap index file that references multiple sitemap files.
A sitemap index file is an XML file that lists multiple sitemap files. It's used when your website has more than 50,000 URLs and you need to split them across multiple sitemap files. This tool includes a sitemap index generator.
The changefreq tag tells search engines how often a page is likely to change. Options are: always, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, and never. Use 'daily' or 'weekly' for frequently updated content, 'monthly' for stable pages, and 'yearly' or 'never' for archived content.
Priority is a value between 0.0 and 1.0 that indicates the relative importance of a URL compared to other URLs on your site. The default is 0.5. Use higher values (0.8-1.0) for your homepage and key landing pages, and lower values (0.1-0.4) for less important pages.
You can submit your sitemap to Google via Google Search Console. Go to 'Sitemaps' in the left menu, enter your sitemap URL (e.g., https://example.com/sitemap.xml), and click 'Submit'. You can also add 'Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml' to your robots.txt file.
While not strictly required, sitemaps are highly recommended for SEO. They help search engines discover new and updated pages faster, especially for large websites, new websites with few backlinks, sites with rich media content, or websites with pages not well linked internally.
Yes! Click 'Import CSV/Text' and paste your CSV data. The expected format is: url, lastmod, changefreq, priority β with one entry per line. The first column (URL) is required; other columns are optional.
No, lastmod is optional but recommended. It tells search engines when a page was last modified, helping them decide when to re-crawl. Use the ISO 8601 date format: YYYY-MM-DD (e.g., 2024-01-15) or full datetime with timezone.