XML Sitemap Generator
Create an XML sitemap of your website in a few minutes. The generator crawls your site as Googlebot, keeps only the pages that belong in a sitemap, and shows every page it left out and why: redirects, errors, noindex and canonicalised pages.
Pages left out
Which pages go in the sitemap
A sitemap should list the URLs you want in search results, and only those. Each crawled page is included when it:
- returns 200 OK without redirecting,
- is an HTML page,
- isn't set to noindex, in a meta tag or the X-Robots-Tag header,
- has a canonical tag pointing to itself, or none,
- isn't blocked by robots.txt,
- and, unless you untick the option, has no URL parameters.
Pages are found by following links from the homepage and from any sitemap you already have, so a page nothing links to won't be found unless it's in your current sitemap.
How to add the sitemap to your site
- Download
sitemap.xmland upload it to the root of your site, so it loads athttps://example.com/sitemap.xml. - Add a line to your robots.txt:
Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml. The Robots.txt Generator can do it for you. - Submit it in Google Search Console under Sitemaps, and in Bing Webmaster Tools.
- Regenerate it when you add or remove pages. If your CMS can generate a sitemap itself, that's better, because it stays up to date.
Questions
Why no priority or changefreq?
Google ignores both, and Bing gives them little weight, so they only add size. A lastmod date helps when it's accurate, which is why it's optional here: many servers send the time of the request as Last-Modified, which would make every page look new.
How many URLs can one sitemap hold?
Up to 50,000 URLs and 50 MB uncompressed. Bigger sites split them into several sitemaps listed in a sitemap index. This generator crawls up to 1,000 pages, well inside the limit.
Does a sitemap get my pages indexed?
It helps search engines find them, but doesn't guarantee indexing. Google still decides whether each page is worth indexing, based on its quality and links. Check a page with the Indexability Checker if it isn't showing up.
I already have a sitemap. How do I check it?
Find it with the Sitemap Finder, then list its URLs with the Sitemap URL Extractor. The Website SEO Audit flags sitemap URLs that redirect, error or are set to noindex.