XML sitemap

Structure

For most sites:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <url>
    <loc>https://example.com/page-1/</loc>
    <lastmod>2026-05-11</lastmod>
    <changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
    <priority>0.8</priority>
  </url>
  ...
</urlset>

Large sites split into multiple sitemaps under a sitemap index:

<sitemapindex>
  <sitemap><loc>https://example.com/sitemap-pages.xml</loc></sitemap>
  <sitemap><loc>https://example.com/sitemap-blog.xml</loc></sitemap>
  <sitemap><loc>https://example.com/sitemap-products.xml</loc></sitemap>
</sitemapindex>

What still matters in 2026

• lastmod — Google still uses it as a freshness/recrawl signal (when accurate)
• priority + changefreq — Google has stated it ignores these, but other engines (Bing) still use them
• Inclusion criteria — only canonical, indexable URLs that return 200. Exclude noindex, redirects, 404s, parameter URLs

Common mistakes

• Including redirect targets (301’d URLs) in the sitemap
• Including noindex pages
• Outdated lastmod values that lie about freshness
• Sitemap not referenced in robots.txt
• Sitemap missing from Google Search Console submission
• Multiple sitemaps with overlapping URLs

Best practices

• Generate dynamically from the CMS or build pipeline (Astro, Next.js, etc.)
• Reference in robots.txt: Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap-index.xml
• Submit explicitly in Google Search Console + Bing Webmaster Tools
• For news/content sites, also generate a Google News sitemap (separate schema)