The Sitemap: line in a robots.txt file that tells crawlers where to find XML sitemaps.
The `Sitemap:` directive in robots.txt is a standardized way to tell search engine crawlers where to find a website's XML sitemaps. It's placed at the top or bottom of the robots.txt file and can appear multiple times for multiple sitemaps.
The directive is not tied to any `User-agent` block — it applies globally to all crawlers. The URL must be absolute (including protocol and domain).
This is the most reliable method of sitemap discovery because robots.txt is always the first file a search engine crawler checks when visiting a domain.
User-agent: *
Allow: /
Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml
Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap-news.xmlSitemapKit's API lets you discover, extract, and parse XML sitemaps from any domain. Get structured JSON data with all sitemap elements including Sitemap Directive in robots.txt.