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What is Sitemap XML?

An XML file that lists all important URLs on a website, helping search engines discover and crawl content efficiently.

A sitemap.xml file provides search engines with a roadmap of your website's content. Each URL entry can include last modification date (lastmod), change frequency (changefreq), and relative priority (priority 0.0-1.0). Sitemap indexes reference multiple sitemap files for large sites (50,000 URL limit per file). Dynamic sitemaps are generated programmatically from database content — listing all product pages, blog posts, category pages, and static pages. Submit sitemaps to search engines via Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, or reference them in robots.txt. Regular sitemap updates help search engines discover new content quickly and understand site structure.

Related Terms

Responsive Design
A web design approach that makes web pages render well on all screen sizes using flexible layouts and media queries.
GraphQL
A query language for APIs that lets clients request exactly the data they need, reducing over-fetching and under-fetching.
JSON Schema
A vocabulary for validating the structure and content of JSON data, ensuring API requests and responses conform to expected formats.
Canonical URL
An HTML element that tells search engines which URL is the preferred version of a page when duplicate or similar content exists at multiple URLs.
Web Performance Optimization
Techniques to make websites load faster and respond more quickly, improving user experience and search engine rankings.
Web Components
A set of browser-native APIs for creating reusable, encapsulated custom HTML elements with their own styling and behavior.
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