Definition
An XML sitemap is a file listing the URLs you want search engines to know about, in the format set by the sitemaps.org protocol. It is a discovery aid. Google states plainly that a sitemap does not guarantee that everything in it gets crawled and indexed.
Example. A new product page linked from nowhere except a filtered category is hard to find by crawling. Listed in your sitemap, it is at least discoverable.
You can turn a list of URLs into a valid file with the free XML Sitemap Generator.
What are the limits on an XML sitemap?
The limits are 50,000 URLs and 50MB uncompressed per file, set by the sitemaps.org protocol and matched by Google. Past that, split the file and list the parts in a sitemap index, which is a sitemap of sitemaps.
| Element | What it does |
|---|---|
<loc> | The URL. The only required element |
<lastmod> | Used by Google, but only when it is consistently accurate |
<priority> | Ignored by Google |
<changefreq> | Ignored by Google |
Which URLs belong in a sitemap?
Only URLs you want indexed, in their canonical form, belong in a sitemap. Listing a page you have noindexed, or one that canonicalises somewhere else, sends two contradictory signals about the same URL: the sitemap nominates it while the page declines.
Treat the submitted against indexed numbers in Search Console as a diagnostic rather than a score. A wide gap is a question about those specific URLs, not a number to grow.
Does an XML sitemap help you rank?
An XML sitemap does not help you rank. It helps a crawler find URLs, which is a different job. Discovery matters most where a site is large, new, poorly linked internally, or holds pages that are otherwise hard to reach, and it matters least on a small well linked site.
Mentioned in
Sources
- sitemaps.org: the sitemap protocol 0.9
- Google Search Central: Build and submit a sitemap
- Google Search Central: Sitemaps overview
Last checked against these sources on 22 September 2026.