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What is an XML sitemap?

An XML sitemap is a file that lists the URLs on your site you want search engines to crawl. It lives at an address like yoursite.com/sitemap.xml, and crawlers such as Googlebot and Bingbot read it to find pages they might not reach by following links.

It's written for machines, not people. An HTML sitemap is a different thing: an ordinary page of links that helps visitors find their way around. You can have both, and they don't replace each other.

Who actually needs a sitemap

Google can crawl a small, well-linked site without one. A sitemap earns its keep when your site is large, brand new, has few backlinks, or has pages that aren't linked from anywhere obvious, exactly the cases where crawlers struggle.

It doesn't guarantee indexing. It makes discovery faster and more complete, which is a different and more honest claim than 'submit a sitemap and rank'.

How to create an XML sitemap

Check your platform first. Most of them already make one for you, and a sitemap your CMS updates on every publish beats any file you generate once and forget.

WordPress

WordPress has built one in since version 5.5, at /wp-sitemap.xml. SEO plugins such as Yoast or Rank Math replace it with their own, usually at /sitemap_index.xml.

Shopify, Wix and Squarespace

All three generate /sitemap.xml automatically and keep it up to date. There is nothing to build.

Blogger

Blogger also serves a sitemap automatically at yourblog.blogspot.com/sitemap.xml (or on your custom domain). Submit that address in Search Console rather than uploading a file, since Blogger doesn't let you host one.

Custom builds and static sites

Frameworks like Next.js, Astro and Hugo can generate a sitemap at build time, which keeps it in step with your pages. A generator like this one is the quick option when that isn't set up.

How this generator builds your file

It doesn't follow links from page to page. It reads your robots.txt and any sitemaps your site already publishes, and turns what it finds into one clean file: your homepage plus up to 500 more URLs.

If your site has no sitemap at all, it checks a set of common page addresses (/pricing, /blog, /about, /contact and similar) and keeps the ones that respond. That gives you a short starting file, not a full map, so add the rest of your pages by hand.

It doesn't check each URL's status code or noindex tag, so review the list before you publish.

XML sitemap example

A sitemap is short and strict. This is a complete, valid file with two URLs:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <url>
    <loc>https://yoursite.com/</loc>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>https://yoursite.com/blog/how-to-rank</loc>
    <lastmod>2026-10-01</lastmod>
  </url>
</urlset>

Every tag in a sitemap, explained

The sitemaps.org protocol defines six tags. Google only pays attention to some of them.

<urlset>

Wraps the whole file and declares the sitemaps.org 0.9 namespace. Every sitemap starts with it.

<url>

One entry per page.

<loc>

The page's full, absolute URL, including https://. The only required tag inside <url>.

<lastmod>

When the page last changed meaningfully. Google uses it only if your dates are consistently accurate, so a date that updates every day whether the page changed or not gets ignored. This generator only writes <lastmod> when it reads a valid date from your existing sitemap. It never makes one up.

<changefreq>

How often the page is meant to change. Google ignores it, so this generator leaves it out.

<priority>

A 0.0 to 1.0 hint about which pages matter most. Google ignores this too, and the generator leaves it out.

What belongs in it

Only URLs you actually want indexed: canonical, self-referencing, 200-status pages. Leave out redirects, 404s, noindex pages, paginated duplicates and parameter variants. A sitemap full of junk teaches crawlers to trust it less.

Use the same version of every URL you use everywhere else: https, and www or no www, matching your canonical tags.

Sitemap size limits and sitemap index files

One sitemap file can hold up to 50,000 URLs and be up to 50MB uncompressed. Past either limit, split it into several files and list them in a sitemap index, a small file that points to each sitemap. You can gzip a sitemap to save bandwidth, but the 50MB limit applies to the unzipped size.

This generator makes a single file of up to 501 URLs (your homepage plus 500), so it suits small and mid-sized sites. For a bigger site, let your CMS or build tool generate the sitemaps and an index.

Other kinds of sitemap

The standard sitemap lists pages. Extensions add detail for specific content, and this generator doesn't create them:

Image sitemap

Lists images on each page so Google can find ones it might miss, such as images loaded by JavaScript.

Video sitemap

Adds a title, description and thumbnail for each video.

News sitemap

For publishers in Google News. Lists articles from the last two days.

hreflang in sitemaps

Tells Google which language or country versions of a page exist, as an alternative to hreflang tags in each page's head.

Publishing it properly

Upload the file to your site root so it resolves at yoursite.com/sitemap.xml, then tell crawlers where it is. The two steps that matter are the robots.txt line and the Search Console submission.

1. 1Upload the file to your site root as /sitemap.xml
2. 2Add a Sitemap: line to your robots.txt, for example Sitemap: https://yoursite.com/sitemap.xml
3. 3Remove any URLs you don't want indexed
4. 4Regenerate after publishing or restructuring

How to submit your sitemap to Google

Search Console is the only way to submit it directly, and it reports how many URLs Google read and any errors it found. Bing Webmaster Tools works the same way for Bing.

You no longer need to ping Google. It retired its sitemap ping endpoint in 2023, and the robots.txt line plus the Search Console submission are what it reads now.

1. 1Open Google Search Console and pick your site
2. 2Go to Indexing, then Sitemaps
3. 3Under Add a new sitemap, enter sitemap.xml (or the file's full path)
4. 4Click Submit and check that the status reads Success
5. 5Come back after a few days to see how many pages were discovered

Do sitemaps matter for AI search?

Indirectly. AI answers in tools like ChatGPT search, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews draw on pages that search engines have already crawled and indexed, and a sitemap helps your pages get crawled. Bing has said that accurate <lastmod> dates help it keep the content behind its AI answers fresh.

No AI company publishes exactly how it picks sources, so treat a sitemap as groundwork, not a shortcut to being cited.