Loading...
Preparing your content
Preparing your content
XML Sitemap Generator
Create a valid sitemap.xml for your site quickly.
Full Site Discovery
Crawl and map all URLs across your site.
Optimized Crawling
Parallel requests and smart caching.
Generation Status
Ready
Set up your sitemap generation parameters.
Status
idle
Total URLs
0
An XML sitemap is a file that lists the URLs on your site along with metadata about each one — when it was last updated, how important it is relative to other pages, and how often it changes. It does not guarantee indexing, but it helps search engines discover pages faster, especially on large sites, new sites with few backlinks, or sites with pages that are not well linked internally.
An XML sitemap exists to make crawling more efficient — it acts as a roadmap that tells search engines which URLs matter, reducing the chance that important pages get missed or that crawl budget gets wasted on low-value ones. It is especially useful for e-commerce catalogs, sites with JavaScript-heavy navigation, or content published faster than crawlers would naturally find it.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
<url>
<loc>https://yoursite.com/</loc>
<lastmod>2026-01-15</lastmod>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
<priority>1.0</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>https://yoursite.com/about</loc>
<lastmod>2026-01-10</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
<priority>0.8</priority>
</url>
</urlset>| Tag | Required? | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| <loc> | Yes | The full URL of the page |
| <lastmod> | Recommended | Last modified date (ISO 8601 format) |
| <changefreq> | Optional | Hint on update frequency (largely ignored by Google now) |
| <priority> | Optional | Relative priority from 0.0 to 1.0 (largely ignored by Google now) |
Google has stated that it mostly relies on <lastmod> and largely disregards <changefreq> and <priority>. Keep them if your CMS generates them automatically, but do not spend time hand-tuning them.
https://yoursite.com/page, not /page.https://yoursite.com/sitemap.xml loads directly in a browser without errors.You can validate structure with our generator above, then spot-check live URLs with Google Search Console's Sitemaps report, which will flag "Couldn't fetch" or "has errors" issues if Google cannot process it.
Your sitemap.xml should always be referenced inside robots.txt so crawlers find it automatically:
Sitemap: https://yoursite.com/sitemap.xml
If a URL in your sitemap is also disallowed in robots.txt, crawlers will skip it — a common mismatch that quietly excludes pages you meant to get indexed. Use our Robots.txt Generator alongside this tool to keep both files in sync.
WordPress (since version 5.5) generates a basic sitemap automatically at /wp-sitemap.xml, built as an index of smaller sitemaps split by content type (posts, pages, categories). If you are using an SEO plugin:
/sitemap_index.xml, replacing the WordPress core sitemap.Only reference one sitemap system in robots.txt at a time — running WordPress core's sitemap and a plugin's sitemap simultaneously can create duplicate, conflicting URLs for crawlers.
Shopify automatically generates and maintains sitemap.xml for every store, split into indexed sub-sitemaps for products, collections, pages, and blog posts — it is not manually editable in the same way robots.txt is, since Shopify auto-updates it as your catalog changes. If you see collection-related errors, they are most often caused by unpublished or deleted collections that are still referenced in a cached sitemap file — these typically clear on their own as Shopify regenerates the sitemap.
For multilingual or multi-region sites, hreflang annotations can live directly inside the sitemap instead of page <head> tags:
<url> <loc>https://yoursite.com/en/page</loc> <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://yoursite.com/en/page"/> <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="es" href="https://yoursite.com/es/page"/> <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://yoursite.com/en/page"/> </url>
This requires the xmlns:xhtml namespace declared in the root <urlset> tag. Sitemap-based hreflang is often easier to maintain at scale than in-page tags, since it is centralized in one file.
If your pages host video content, a dedicated video sitemap (or video tags within your main sitemap) helps video content surface in Google video search results, using the video: namespace with tags such as <video:title>, <video:thumbnail_loc>, and <video:duration>.
Do I need an XML sitemap?
Not strictly, but it significantly helps discovery on large, new, or poorly linked sites.
Does a sitemap guarantee indexing?
No — it aids discovery and crawling, but Google still decides independently what to index.
Where do I submit my sitemap?
Add it to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, and reference it in robots.txt.
Can I have multiple sitemaps?
Yes — use a sitemap index file that links to individual sitemaps, useful for sites over 50,000 URLs or split by content type.
How often should I update my sitemap?
It should regenerate automatically whenever content is added, removed, or significantly changed — most CMS platforms and plugins handle this without manual work.
Explore more tools