Sitemap Generator — Create XML Sitemap Online

How XML Sitemaps Work

An XML sitemap is a structured file that tells search engines about the pages on your website. It follows a standardized format defined at sitemaps.org. When Google or Bing crawls your site, it checks for a sitemap at /sitemap.xml and uses it as a roadmap to discover all your pages — especially pages that might not be reachable through internal links alone. Each URL entry can include metadata like last modification date, change frequency, and relative priority.

How to Create a Sitemap

Auto-Fetch (recommended): Enter your domain in the Auto-Fetch tab. Our crawler visits your homepage, follows internal links, and discovers up to 50 pages automatically. This is the fastest way to generate a sitemap without manually listing every URL.

Manual paste: If you know all your URLs, paste them one per line in the Paste URLs tab. Useful when you have a specific list of pages you want indexed or when auto-fetch can't reach all pages.

Where to Upload Your Sitemap

Step 1: Download or copy the generated sitemap.xml file.

Step 2: Upload it to your website's root directory so it's accessible at yoursite.com/sitemap.xml.

Step 3: Add this line to your robots.txt file: Sitemap: https://yoursite.com/sitemap.xml

Step 4: Submit it in Google Search Console under Sitemaps → Add a new sitemap. Also submit in Bing Webmaster Tools for Bing coverage.

Priority and Change Frequency Explained

Priority (0.0–1.0): Tells search engines which pages are most important relative to other pages on YOUR site. Homepage = 1.0, main pages = 0.8, blog posts = 0.6, archive/tag pages = 0.3. This does not affect your ranking vs other websites.

Change Frequency: A hint about how often a page changes. Use "daily" for news/blog, "weekly" for product pages, "monthly" for about/contact, "yearly" for legal pages. Google largely ignores this value but Bing may use it for crawl scheduling.

How to Validate Your Sitemap

Use the Validate tab above to check if an existing sitemap is properly formatted. Our validator checks that the URL is accessible, the XML parses correctly, the root element is a valid urlset or sitemapindex, and counts all URL entries. You can also validate your sitemap in Google Search Console after submitting — it will report any errors like unreachable URLs or invalid XML.

Sitemap Best Practices

Only include indexable pages: Don't add pages with noindex tags, redirected pages, or error pages. Every URL in your sitemap should return a 200 status code.

Keep it updated: Update your sitemap whenever you add, remove, or significantly change pages. Stale sitemaps can lead to crawl errors.

Use canonical URLs: Each URL in the sitemap should match the canonical version of that page (with or without www, with or without trailing slash — be consistent).

Max 50,000 URLs per file: If your site has more than 50,000 pages, split into multiple sitemap files and use a sitemap index file to reference them all.