XML Sitemap
A file listing a website's URLs to help search engines discover and crawl pages.
An XML Sitemap is a file (typically located at /sitemap.xml) that lists the URLs on your website, helping search engines discover and prioritize crawling. Modern frameworks (Next.js, Astro) often generate sitemaps automatically. Sitemaps are submitted to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
Large sites use sitemap indexes that link to multiple smaller sitemaps. E-commerce sites often segment sitemaps by product, category, and content.
A site with 5,000 product pages, 200 category pages, and 100 blog posts submits a sitemap index with three child sitemaps. Google crawls and indexes more thoroughly than relying on link discovery alone.
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