Web Dev//SEO//sitemap

- An XML file (`/sitemap.xml`) listing every URL on a site that should be indexed, with optional metadata (last modified date, change frequency, priority).

An XML file (/sitemap.xml) listing every URL on a site that should be indexed, with optional metadata (last modified date, change frequency, priority).

Autodiscovery: reference it from robots.txt (Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml) and/or submit it via Google Search Console.

Especially important for SPAs and JS-heavy sites where crawlers cannot discover pages by following links (there are no server-rendered links to follow).

Best practice: auto-generate at build time so it stays in sync with actual content. Manual sitemaps go stale.

Size limits: 50,000 URLs or 50MB per file. Use a sitemap index file to split larger sites.

Not a ranking signal — it is a discovery signal. Being in the sitemap does not guarantee indexing, it just guarantees the crawler knows the URL exists.