XML Sitemap Generator
Paste your URLs, get a valid sitemap.xml file.
How to Use
Paste one URL per line, choose a change frequency and priority to apply to every URL, and optionally include today's date as the last-modified date. The valid sitemap.xml output updates live below, ready to download and upload to your site's root directory. Every URL needs to be a complete, absolute address starting with https:// or http://, relative paths like /about are not valid inside a sitemap and will produce a file that fails validation.
What an XML Sitemap Actually Does
A sitemap is a structured list of URLs that tells search engines which pages on your site exist and are worth crawling, formatted according to the sitemaps.org protocol. It doesn't replace internal linking or good site architecture, crawlers still primarily discover pages by following links, but it acts as a safety net and a fast-track for pages that might otherwise take a while to find, especially on new sites with few inbound links, large sites with thousands of pages, or sites where important pages sit deep in the navigation structure several clicks from the homepage. Once submitted, Search Console reports back which of the sitemap's URLs were indexed and flags any that weren't, giving you a direct diagnostic view you wouldn't otherwise have.
Worked Example: Building a Sitemap for a Small Blog
Say a blog has a homepage, an about page, and two published posts. Pasting these four URLs, setting Change Frequency to "Weekly" (since new posts publish somewhat regularly) and Priority to "0.8", with "Include today's date" checked, produces a well-formed file where each of the four <url> blocks contains a <loc>, a <lastmod> matching today's date in YYYY-MM-DD format, a <changefreq>weekly</changefreq>, and a <priority>0.8</priority>, wrapped in the required <urlset> root element with its sitemaps.org namespace declaration. This structure is what a search engine's sitemap parser expects, and it's exactly what Google Search Console's sitemap validator checks for when you submit the file.
Common Mistakes That Cause a Sitemap to Be Rejected
The most frequent validation failure is mixing relative and absolute URLs, every single <loc> entry must be a full absolute URL, not a path fragment. A second common mistake is including URLs that redirect (301/302) or return a 404, a sitemap should only list final destination URLs that return a 200 status directly, listing a redirect chain wastes crawl budget and can generate warnings in Search Console. A third mistake is forgetting to update the sitemap after adding or removing pages, an outdated sitemap that still references deleted pages, or is missing recently published ones, gradually loses a search engine's trust and gets crawled less thoroughly over time. And a fourth is listing non-canonical duplicate URLs (like both the http and https versions of the same page, or a URL with and without a trailing slash) instead of the one canonical version each page should have.
Single Sitemap vs Sitemap Index
Most small and medium sites need only one sitemap.xml file listing every indexable URL directly. Once a site approaches the 50,000-URL or 50MB-uncompressed limit for a single file, or when it makes organizational sense to split by content type (a separate sitemap for blog posts, one for products, one for category pages), the standard approach is a sitemap index file: a small XML file at the same sitemap.xml location whose entries point to multiple child sitemap files rather than to individual pages directly. Search engines crawl the index first, then fetch each child sitemap in turn. This tool generates a single flat sitemap suited to the common case, for a sitemap index you'd repeat this process per content type and wrap the resulting file URLs in a separate index file by hand.
Sitemap.xml and robots.txt Work Together
These two files solve opposite problems and are meant to be used side by side: robots.txt (this site's Robots.txt Generator) tells crawlers what to avoid, while sitemap.xml tells them what to prioritize. Referencing your sitemap's URL inside robots.txt via a Sitemap: line is a widely supported convention that lets any crawler discover the sitemap automatically, even ones you haven't manually registered with in a webmaster tool, without needing to guess the file's location.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many URLs can one sitemap file hold?
Up to 50,000 URLs per sitemap file, and the file itself shouldn't exceed 50MB uncompressed. Larger sites split their URLs across multiple sitemap files and list them all in a sitemap index file.
Where do I upload the generated sitemap.xml?
Typically at your domain's root, so it's reachable at yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml. Then submit that URL in Google Search Console (and Bing Webmaster Tools) so search engines know where to find it, and reference it in your robots.txt file.
Does a sitemap guarantee my pages will be indexed?
No. A sitemap is a discovery aid, it tells search engines a URL exists and roughly how important or fresh it is, but indexing decisions still depend on content quality, whether the page is blocked by robots.txt or a noindex tag, and whether it's reachable at all. Submitting a sitemap increases the odds of fast, complete discovery, it doesn't force indexing.
Should I include every URL on my site in the sitemap, or only the important ones?
Only include canonical, indexable, high-value URLs, the pages you actually want ranking in search results. Leave out duplicate parameter URLs, admin pages, thank-you pages, noindexed pages, and redirects. A sitemap full of low-value or non-indexable URLs dilutes the signal and can make Google trust the file less over time.
What do changefreq and priority actually do?
They're hints, not commands. Changefreq suggests how often a page's content changes, and priority (a 0.0-1.0 scale) suggests a URL's importance relative to other URLs on the same site. Google has stated it largely ignores both values today, treating them as unreliable since many sites set every page to daily/1.0. It's still valid to include them, and some other search engines and crawlers do use them, but don't expect them to meaningfully move rankings.
Can a sitemap include pages from a different domain?
No, every URL listed in a sitemap must belong to the same site the sitemap is hosted on (the same protocol and host, subdomains count as different hosts). A sitemap at https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml can only list https://www.example.com/... URLs, not URLs on a different subdomain or domain. This is a validation rule search engines enforce, not just a convention.