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Local search and SEO

Sitemap

XML sitemap / sitemap.xml / sitemap index / lastmod

In short

A sitemap is a file listing the URLs on your site so search engines can find them. Google says it ignores the priority and changefreq tags and uses lastmod only when the date is verifiably accurate. Bing calls lastmod a key freshness signal. A sitemap aids discovery and guarantees nothing.

Google states the job and the limit in one sentence: a sitemap helps search engines discover URLs on your site, but it does not guarantee that all the items in it will be crawled and indexed. Discovery, not admission. Everything sold on top of a sitemap has to fit inside that.

It also says, in writing, that plenty of sites do not need one. Google's condition for not needing a sitemap is a site of about 500 pages or fewer, counting only pages you think need to be in search results, that is comprehensively linked internally so its important pages can be reached by following links from the home page. That describes a great many businesses.

The part worth knowing before anyone bills you for sitemap optimization is what the optional tags actually do. The format allows three: priority, changefreq and lastmod. Google says it ignores priority and changefreq outright. It uses lastmod only if the value is consistently and verifiably accurate, for instance by comparison against when the page actually changed, and says it should reflect the last significant update, such as a change to the main content, the structured data or the links.

Bing lands in the same place from the other direction, calling lastmod a key signal, since freshness influences how quickly updates reach results and AI-generated answers. So of three optional fields, both major engines use one, and only when it is honest.

In practice

The default output of many content systems is a sitemap where every URL carries priority 1.0, changefreq daily, and a lastmod that moves every time the site is deployed. Two of those are discarded. The third has been made unverifiable, since a date that changes when nothing changed is exactly what Google describes checking against. A tidier sitemap is not a ranking tactic. It is the difference between one usable signal and none.

Not the same as

robots.txt
That governs what a crawler may fetch. A sitemap suggests what is worth fetching.
A request to index
Google is explicit that inclusion does not guarantee crawling or indexing.

Why it matters to you

Sitemaps are cheap to generate and easy to put on an invoice, and the honest version of the work is small: list the URLs you want found, keep the dates truthful, stay inside the size limits. Google caps a single sitemap at 50MB or 50,000 URLs, and Bing describes index files referencing up to 50,000 child sitemaps. For a business with a few hundred pages, none of that is the constraint. The truthfulness of lastmod is the only tunable that both engines say they read.

What to ask or check

  1. 01Does our sitemap list only pages we actually want in search results?
  2. 02Does lastmod reflect real changes, or does it move on every deploy?
  3. 03Is anyone charging for priority and changefreq tuning, which Google says it ignores?

What people get wrong

That a sitemap gets pages indexed. Google says it helps search engines discover URLs but does not guarantee that everything in it will be crawled and indexed.

Red flags

  • Every URL carrying priority 1.0 and changefreq daily, two values Google says it ignores.
  • A lastmod date that changes on every deploy, which is what makes it unverifiable.
  • Pages in the sitemap that nobody wants appearing in search results.

Who owns it

Usually generated by the content system rather than written by anyone, which is why its defaults survive for years unexamined.

Where you will see it

Usually at /sitemap.xml, referenced from robots.txt, and submitted in Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools.

Keep reading

robots.txt

A robots.txt file tells crawlers which URLs they may fetch on your site. Google is explicit that it is not a way to keep a page out of search: a disallowed URL can still be indexed if other sites link to it. The convention dates to 1994 and became RFC 9309 in 2022.

Canonical URL

A canonical URL is the version of a page you want treated as the real one when several URLs show the same content. The standard calls it the author's preferred version. Google ranks it a strong signal, not an instruction, and says none of these methods are required because it will pick a version anyway.

Scaled content abuse

Scaled content abuse is Google's name for generating many pages mainly to manipulate rankings rather than help people. Its definition says this applies no matter how the content is created, so using AI is not itself the violation. Google states it focuses on the quality of content rather than how it was produced.

Structured data

Structured data is markup that describes your page in a shared vocabulary, founded by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Yandex. Google is explicit about the limit: using it enables a feature to be present and does not guarantee that it will be present, even when the markup is correct.

Review snippet

A review snippet is the star rating Google can show beside a search result, drawn from structured data on the page. Local businesses cannot get one from reviews about themselves. Google says pages where the reviewed entity controls the reviews, including embedded review widgets, are ineligible.

Review suppression

Review suppression is hiding or removing customer reviews based on how negative they are. The FTC rule allows moderation as long as the criteria are applied equally regardless of sentiment. What it prohibits is implying the reviews you display represent all of them, and using false accusations or threats to get one taken down.

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