The XML tag that indicates when a URL was last modified.
The `<lastmod>` element specifies the date (and optionally time) when the content at the URL was last modified. It uses W3C Datetime format, which can range from just a date (`YYYY-MM-DD`) to a full datetime with timezone (`YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss+TZ`).
Google has stated that they use `lastmod` as a signal if it's consistently accurate. If a site always sets lastmod to the current date regardless of actual changes, Google may ignore it entirely.
Accurate `lastmod` values help search engines prioritize crawling recently updated content, making them especially valuable for news sites and frequently updated blogs.
<url>
<loc>https://example.com/blog/post-1</loc>
<lastmod>2025-03-15T14:30:00+00:00</lastmod>
</url>SitemapKit's API lets you discover, extract, and parse XML sitemaps from any domain. Get structured JSON data with all sitemap elements including lastmod.