Question 1

What is a sitemap.xml file?

Accepted Answer

sitemap.xml is a text file in XML format that lists every important URL on your website along with optional metadata — lastmod, changefreq and priority. Search engines like Google, Bing and Yandex read it to discover and prioritize your pages.

Question 2

How many URLs can a sitemap contain?

Accepted Answer

Each sitemap file can contain up to 50,000 URLs and be no larger than 50 MB uncompressed. For larger sites, use a sitemap index file that points to multiple sub-sitemaps.

Question 3

Where do I put my sitemap.xml?

Accepted Answer

Upload the file to the root directory of your website (e.g. https://example.com/sitemap.xml). Then submit the URL in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. You can also reference it in your robots.txt file with the Sitemap directive.

Question 4

What is the difference between changefreq and priority?

Accepted Answer

changefreq is a hint to crawlers about how often a URL changes (always, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, never). priority is a relative weight from 0.0 to 1.0 indicating which URLs are most important. Google ignores both signals but Bing still uses them.

Question 5

Do I need to validate my sitemap?

Accepted Answer

Yes. After generating, the tool validates each URL format, character encoding, required fields and the 50,000 URL limit. You can also run your sitemap through Google Search Console's sitemap tester after upload.