How it works
The XML Sitemap Generator creates a valid XML sitemap from a list of URLs you provide — adding lastmod dates, changefreq values, and priority scores, and outputting the complete sitemap.xml ready to upload and submit to Google Search Console.
An XML sitemap is a file that tells search engines which pages on your site exist, when they were last updated, and how often they change. While Google can discover pages through crawling, a sitemap ensures all your important URLs are known to the crawler and helps Google understand your content hierarchy.
How to use it: paste a list of URLs (one per line) or upload a text file. Set a global lastmod date or specify per-URL dates. Choose changefreq (always, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, never) and priority (0.0–1.0, where 1.0 is highest). Click Generate to produce the XML sitemap. Download it and place it at https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml.
Priority guidelines: homepage = 1.0, main category/section pages = 0.8–0.9, individual content pages = 0.6–0.8, utility pages (about, contact, privacy) = 0.3–0.5. Priority is a hint to crawlers, not a guarantee of ranking.
Sitemap submission: after placing your sitemap on the server, submit it in Google Search Console (Sitemaps section) and Bing Webmaster Tools. Also add Sitemap: https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml to your robots.txt file so crawlers discover it automatically.
Size limits: a single sitemap file can contain up to 50,000 URLs and must be under 50MB uncompressed. For larger sites, use a sitemap index file that references multiple individual sitemaps.
Frequently Asked Questions
- For sites with fewer than 100 pages that are well internally-linked, a sitemap provides marginal benefit — Google will discover pages through crawling. For larger sites, sites with poor internal linking, new sites with no backlinks, or sites with content in formats harder to crawl (video, images), a sitemap is important.
- A sitemap.xml lists individual URLs (up to 50,000). A sitemap index file (sitemap_index.xml) lists multiple sitemap files — used when your site has more than 50,000 URLs or you want to organize sitemaps by section.
- Include only pages you want indexed. Exclude: paginated results beyond page 2, filtered/sorted URL variants (use canonical tags on these), thin pages, login/account pages, admin URLs, and staging pages. Quality over quantity — a focused sitemap is better than one with thousands of low-value URLs.
- After major changes (new sections, large batch of new pages, significant URL changes). Google caches submitted sitemaps and re-fetches them periodically. Most changes are picked up without manual resubmission.