Sitemap Glossary

What is <changefreq>?

The XML tag that indicates how frequently a page's content is likely to change.

Written by SitemapKit Editorial TeamUpdated: Jul 21, 2026

Key takeaways

  • Interpret <changefreq> in its sitemap XML context; the detailed definition below explains its role and constraints.
  • Validate <changefreq> against a real XML example instead of relying on the field or tag name alone.

The `<changefreq>` element provides a hint to search engines about how often the content at a URL is expected to change. Valid values are: `always`, `hourly`, `daily`, `weekly`, `monthly`, `yearly`, and `never`.

It's important to note that Google has confirmed they largely ignore this tag. It's treated as a hint, not a directive. Despite this, many sitemap generators still include it for compatibility with other search engines.

The value `always` is typically used for pages that change every time they're accessed (like search results), while `never` is for archived pages that won't change.

XML example

<url>
  <loc>https://example.com/news</loc>
  <changefreq>hourly</changefreq>
</url>

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Sources and further reading

Work with sitemaps programmatically

SitemapKit's API discovers and parses XML sitemaps into structured JSON, including fields such as changefreq.

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