What is an XML sitemap and what goes in it?

What a sitemap does

An XML sitemap is a file that lists the URLs on your site you want search engines to crawl and index, with optional details such as when each page last changed. It follows the sitemaps.org protocol, which Google, Bing and other search engines support.

It helps discovery, especially on large sites, new sites with few external links, and sites that publish often. It is a hint, not a command: listing a URL does not guarantee it will be crawled or indexed. A small site with good internal links may be found without one, but a clean sitemap costs little and gives you a useful reference point in Search Console.

What to include and what to leave out

Include only the URLs you want to appear in search: canonical, indexable pages that return a 200 status. A sitemap full of redirects, errors or duplicates sends mixed signals and makes your indexing reports harder to read.

• Leave out URLs that redirect, return 404 or 410, or carry noindex.
• Leave out non-canonical variants, such as parameter, sorting or session URLs.
• Leave out URLs blocked by robots.txt, and staging or test pages.
• Use full, absolute URLs with the same protocol and hostname as your canonicals.

The tags that matter

Each entry needs a loc element with the URL. The optional lastmod element gives the date the page last changed in a meaningful way. Google uses lastmod when it is consistently and verifiably accurate, so update it for real changes to content, structured data or links, not for a new copyright year or every rebuild of the site. Google ignores the priority and changefreq values.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <url>
    <loc>https://www.example.com/services/roof-repair/</loc>
    <lastmod>2026-09-14</lastmod>
  </url>
</urlset>

Size limits and sitemap index files

A single sitemap can hold up to 50,000 URLs or 50 MB uncompressed, whichever comes first. You can gzip the file to save bandwidth, but the uncompressed limit still applies.

For larger sites, split URLs across several sitemaps and list them in a sitemap index file. Splitting by section or content type, such as products, categories and articles, also makes it easier to see which part of the site has indexing problems.

Submitting and referencing it

1. Submit the sitemap URL in the Sitemaps report in Google Search Console, and in Bing Webmaster Tools.
2. Add a Sitemap line with the full URL to your robots.txt file, so any crawler that reads robots.txt can find it.
3. Check the Sitemaps report for fetch or parsing errors, then use the Page indexing report to see which submitted URLs were indexed and why others were not.
4. Regenerate the sitemap automatically when pages are added, removed or changed.

Sitemap: https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml

Google retired its sitemap ping endpoint in 2023. Submitting in Search Console, referencing the file in robots.txt and keeping lastmod accurate are now the ways to signal changes.