Free Sitemap Generator
Turn a list of your pages into a valid XML sitemap in seconds. Copy or download your sitemap.xml, submit it to Google, and get suggestions for pages you might be missing.
What an XML sitemap does, and what it does not
An XML sitemap is a list of URLs you are asking search engines to consider crawling. It is a hint, not an instruction: Google decides what to crawl and index on its own, and a URL appearing in your sitemap guarantees neither.
What a sitemap genuinely helps with is discovery. Pages buried deep in your navigation, recently published pages, and pages with few internal links are the ones that benefit. A well-linked page on a small site was going to be found regardless.
What each input means
- <loc>
- The absolute URL, including protocol and domain. It must match your canonical exactly — including the trailing slash and the www or non-www choice — or you send a conflicting signal.
- <lastmod>
- The date the content last meaningfully changed. Google uses it when it is trustworthy and ignores it entirely when every URL claims to have been modified today.
- <changefreq>
- A hint about update frequency. Google has stated it largely ignores this field; it is harmless but not worth agonising over.
- <priority>
- A relative 0.0–1.0 weighting within your own site. It carries little weight and none at all across domains. Setting everything to 1.0 makes it meaningless.
Sitemap limits and conventions
Sites exceeding either limit need a sitemap index file that points to multiple sitemaps. Most CMS platforms handle this automatically.
| URLs per sitemap | 50,000 max | Split into multiple files beyond this. |
|---|---|---|
| Uncompressed file size | 50 MB max | Gzip compression is supported and recommended. |
| Location | /sitemap.xml | Conventional, though any path works if declared in robots.txt. |
| Declaration | Sitemap: line in robots.txt | The most reliable way to have it discovered. |
| Submission | Google Search Console | Also surfaces indexing errors per sitemap. |
Common mistakes
Including URLs that should not be indexed
Pages carrying a noindex tag, redirects, 404s or canonicalised duplicates do not belong in a sitemap. Including them sends contradictory signals and wastes crawl budget on a large site.
Mismatched trailing slashes
If your canonical is /services/ and your sitemap says /services, you are declaring two different URLs. Pick one form and apply it everywhere — sitemap, canonicals and internal links.
Fake lastmod dates
Regenerating every date on every build teaches Google the field is meaningless on your site, and it stops using it. Only update lastmod when content actually changes.
Treating the sitemap as an indexing fix
If pages are not being indexed, the cause is almost always quality, duplication or crawl blocking. A sitemap surfaces the problem in Search Console; it does not solve it.
The most useful thing a sitemap gives you is diagnostic. Once submitted, Search Console reports how many of the submitted URLs are actually indexed. A large gap between submitted and indexed is one of the clearest signals available that you have a content quality or duplication problem — and that is worth far more than the crawling nudge the file itself provides.
Frequently Asked Questions
Everything you need to know about this free tool.
Want Google to Actually Crawl & Rank Your Pages?
A sitemap is step one. We handle the full technical SEO picture — crawlability, indexing, site speed and structure — so your pages get found and ranked.
- Technical SEO audit & fixes
- Indexing & crawl optimization
- Site speed improvements
- Google Search Console setup