What is Sitemaps and Crawl Budget?

Crawl budget is the number of pages a search engine will crawl on your site within a given time period. Sitemaps influence crawl budget in several ways:

1. **Priority signals** — While Google ignores the `<priority>` tag, the presence of a URL in a sitemap signals it's worth crawling 2. **Freshness signals** — Accurate `<lastmod>` dates help search engines prioritize recently updated pages 3. **Discovery efficiency** — Sitemaps eliminate the need for crawlers to discover pages through link following, saving crawl budget 4. **Scope definition** — Pages NOT in your sitemap aren't excluded from crawling, but sitemap inclusion confirms importance

For large sites (100k+ pages), sitemaps are critical for crawl budget optimization. Including only indexable, canonical URLs ensures crawl budget isn't wasted on low-value pages.