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Guidance on third-party SEO tools and advice Crawling and indexing Overview File types Google can index URL structure Links Sitemaps Learn about sitemaps Build and submit a sitemap Manage sitemaps with sitemap index file Sitemap extensions Image sitemaps News sitemaps Video sitemaps and alternatives Combining sitemap extensions Crawler management Ask Google to recrawl your URLs Troubleshoot crawl errors Google crawlers List of Google crawlers Googlebot Reduce the Google crawl rate Verifying Googlebot and other Google crawlers robots.txt Introduction to robots.txt How Google interprets the robots.txt specification Canonicalization What is URL canonicalization How to specify a canonical URL with rel="canonical" and other methods Fix canonicalization issues Mobile site and mobile-first indexing AMP AMP on Google Search guidelines Understand how AMP works in search results Enhance AMP content Validate AMP content Remove AMP content JavaScript Understand the JavaScript SEO basics Fix search-related JavaScript problems Fix lazy-loaded content Dynamic rendering as a workaround Page and content metadata Page metadata Meta tags Meta tags and HTML attributes that Google supports Robots meta tag, data-nosnippet, and X-Robots-Tag noindex rel attributes Removals Control what you share with Google Page removals Image removals Redacted information Site moves and changes Redirects and Google Search Site moves Changing your hosting Move a site with URL changes A/B testing Temporarily pause or disable a website Ranking and search appearance Overview AI features Byline dates Favicons Featured snippets Flexible Sampling Google Discover Images Local features Business details Top Places List Opting out of local search results Page experience Understanding page experience Core Web Vitals Interstitials and dialogs Get started with signed exchanges on Google Search Preferred sources Ranking systems A guide to Google Search ranking systems Reviews system Ranking updates List of ranking updates Core updates Spam updates Site names Sitelinks Snippets Structured data Understand how structured data works Structured data general guidelines Enriched search results Generate structured data with JavaScript Feature guides All structured data features Article Book actions Breadcrumb Carousel Course list Dataset Discussion forum Education Q&A Employer aggregate rating Fact check Event FAQ Image metadata Job posting Local business Math solver Movie carousel Organization Shopping Overview Product snippet Merchant listing Variants Loyalty program Merchant return policy Merchant shipping policy Profile page Q&A Recipe Review snippet Software app Speakable Subscription and paywalled content Vacation rental Video Title links Translated features Translated results Ad networks and translation-related Google Search features Videos Visual Elements gallery Web Stories Enable Web Stories on Google Best practices for creating Web Stories Web Story content policy Early Adopters Program Package tracking Structured data carousels (beta) Monitoring and debugging Debug drops in Search traffic Monitor with Search Console Get started with Search Console Improve SEO with a bubble chart Using Search Console and Google Analytics data for SEO Debug with search operators Overview site: search operator Google Images search operators Preventing and monitoring abuse Overview Prevent user-generated spam Malware and unwanted software Prevent a malware infection Social engineering (phishing and deceptive sites) Google Safe Browsing Repeat Offenders Policy Get started with Google Trends Site-specific guides Ecommerce Overview Where content can appear Share product data Include structured data Launch a new website Write high quality reviews Design a URL structure Ecommerce site structure Pagination, incremental page loading, and Search International and multilingual Overview Managing multi-regional and multilingual sites Tell Google about localized versions of your page How Google crawls locale-adaptive pages Explicit content Guidelines for sites with explicit content What to do if your site is incorrectly flagged as explicit SEO fundamentals Introduction Search Essentials SEO Starter Guide Optimizing for generative AI search How Google Search Works Do you need an SEO? Crawling and indexing Sitemaps robots.txt Meta tags Crawler management Removals Canonicalization Redirects JavaScript SEO Ranking and search appearance Visual Elements gallery Title links Snippets Images Videos Structured data Favicons Site-specific guides Ecommerce International and multilingual sites Data analysis Get started with Search Console Debug traffic drops Using Search Console and Google Analytics data for SEO Get started with Google Trends All updates Documentation updates Ranking updates New YouTube videos Recent podcast episodes Home Search Central Documentation Send feedback Learn about sitemaps A sitemap is a file where you provide information about the pages, videos, and other files on your site, and the relationships between them. Search engines like Google read this file to crawl your site more efficiently. A sitemap tells search engines which pages and files you think are important in your site, and also provides valuable information about these files. For example, when the page was last updated and any alternate language versions of the page. You can use a sitemap to provide information about specific types of content on your pages, including video , image , and news content. For example: A sitemap video entry can specify the video running time, rating, and age-appropriateness rating. A sitemap image entry can include the location of the images included in a page. A sitemap news entry can include the article title and publication date. If you're using a CMS such as WordPress, Wix, or Blogger, it's likely that your CMS has already made a sitemap available to search engines and you don't have to do anything. Do I need a sitemap? If your site's pages are properly linked, Google can usually discover most of your site. Proper linking means that all pages that you deem important can be reached through some form of navigation, be that your site's menu or links that you placed on pages. Even so, a sitemap can improve the crawling of larger or more complex sites, or more specialized files. A sitemap helps search engines discover URLs on your site, but it doesn't guarantee that all the items in your sitemap will be crawled and indexed. However, in most cases, your site will benefit from having a sitemap. You might need a sitemap if: Your site is large. Generally, on large sites it's more difficult to make sure that every page is linked by at least one other page on the site. As a result, it's more likely Googlebot might not discover some of your new pages. Your site is new and has few external links to it. Googlebot and other web crawlers crawl the web by accessing URLs found in previously crawled pages. As a result, Googlebot might not discover your pages if no other sites link to them. Your site has a lot of rich media content (video, images) or is shown in Google News. Google can take additional information from sitemaps into account for Search. You might not need a sitemap if: Your site is "small". By small, we mean about 500 pages or fewer on your site. Only pages that you think need to be in search results count toward this total. Your site is comprehensively linked internally. This means that Googlebot can find all the important pages on your site by following links starting from the home page. You don't have many media files (video, image) or news pages that you want to show in search results. Sitemaps can help Google find and understand video and image files, or news articles, on your site. If you don't need these results to appear in Search you might not need a sitemap. Build a sitemap If you decided that you need a sitemap, learn more about how to create one . Send feedback Except as otherwise noted, the content of this page is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License , and code samples are licensed under the Apache 2.0 License . For details, see the Google Developers Site Policies . Java is a registered trademark of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Last updated 2025-12-10 UTC. Need to tell us more? [[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Missing the information I need","missingTheInformationINeed","thumb-down"],["Too complicated / too many steps","tooComplicatedTooManySteps","thumb-down"],["Out of date","outOfDate","thumb-down"],["Samples / code issue","samplesCodeIssue","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],["Last updated 2025-12-10 UTC."],[],["Sitemaps provide search engines with information about a website's pages, videos, and files, including their relationships, last update date, and language versions. They are beneficial for large, new sites, or those with rich media, improving crawl efficiency. Sitemaps can include video, image, or news-specific entries, detailing attributes like video duration or publication dates. However, if a site is small (under 500 pages), well-linked, or lacks media/news content, a sitemap may not be necessary.\n"]] LinkedIn Join us on LinkedIn YouTube Watch our videos Blog Subscribe to our RSS feed Podcast Listen to Search Off the Record X (Twitter) Join us on X (Twitter) Get support Go to the help forum Submit a question for office hours Report spam, phishing, or malware More support resources Resources Do you need an SEO? SEO Starter Guide Status of Search systems Search Console documentation Case Studies Tools Search Console Rich Results Test PageSpeed Insights AMP Test Android Chrome Firebase Google Cloud Platform Google AI All products Terms Privacy Manage cookies English Deutsch Español Español – América Latina Français Indonesia Italiano Polski Português – Brasil Tiếng Việt Türkçe Русский العربيّة हिंदी ภาษาไทย 中文 – 简体 中文 – 繁體 日本語 한국어