An XML file that lists all important URLs on a website for search engines to crawl.
A sitemap.xml file is an XML document placed on a web server that lists the URLs a website owner wants search engines to index. It follows the Sitemaps.org protocol and can include metadata about each URL such as when it was last modified (`lastmod`), how often it changes (`changefreq`), and its relative priority (`priority`).
Most websites place their sitemap at the root: `https://example.com/sitemap.xml`. Search engines like Google, Bing, and Yandex use sitemaps to discover pages more efficiently, especially for large sites or pages that aren't well-linked internally.
The maximum file size for a single sitemap is 50MB (uncompressed) and it can contain up to 50,000 URLs. For larger sites, a sitemap index file is used to reference multiple sitemap files.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
<url>
<loc>https://example.com/</loc>
<lastmod>2025-01-15</lastmod>
<changefreq>daily</changefreq>
<priority>1.0</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>https://example.com/about</loc>
<lastmod>2025-01-10</lastmod>
</url>
</urlset>Inspect sitemap.xml in a real sitemap.
Turn XML sitemap fields into structured, exportable URL data.
See how this concept appears in SitemapKit API responses.
Apply sitemap concepts to SEO, monitoring, and data pipelines.
SitemapKit's API discovers and parses XML sitemaps into structured JSON, including fields such as sitemap.xml.