XML Sitemap
In one sentence
A file listing the URLs you want indexed, with optional metadata about when each last changed.
Analogy Mental model
The library's master catalogue. The acquisitions scout does not walk the shelves; the catalogue says what exists and where.
In practice What you actually do
Submit it in Search Console, include lastmod only when the date is real, and split by section past fifty thousand URLs. It should contain canonical 200s and nothing else, because its purpose is to say what deserves a visit.
Where people get burned Pitfalls
A sitemap is a suggestion. Including thin pages, redirects or 404s teaches the crawler the file is unreliable, and it starts ignoring the whole document rather than individual entries.
This entry was written in English from the Chinese original, not machine-translated. Read the Chinese version →