An XML sitemap is a file that lists the URLs of a website intended to be crawled by search engines. Its structure determines how quickly Google discovers, crawls, and indexes pages. A poorly constructed sitemap does not cause any visible errors, but it silently slows down the indexing of strategic content.
Obsolete XML sitemap tags: what to remove
The original specification of the sitemaps.org protocol includes several optional tags for each URL. Among them, priority and changefreq are now ignored by Google. Keeping them in the file provides no benefit and unnecessarily bloats the document.
The priority tag assigned a value between 0.0 and 1.0 to indicate the relative importance of a page. Google no longer considers it when scheduling its visits. The changefreq tag, intended to indicate the update frequency (daily, weekly, monthly), is treated the same way: the bot ignores it.
Removing these two fields reduces the file size and eliminates a false impression of control over the crawl. The information from actuweb fr illustrates what a streamlined sitemap looks like, focused on the URLs and their actually utilized metadata.
The only optional tag that retains real weight is lastmod, provided it is used correctly, which is the subject of the next section.
Lastmod of the sitemap: the only reliable freshness signal
The lastmod field indicates the date of the last significant modification of a page. When this date is reliable, Googlebot uses it to prioritize the recrawl of recently updated content. This is the most direct lever a webmaster has to speed up the acknowledgment of a change.
Lastmod should reflect only actual content changes, not the date of automatic file regeneration. A sitemap where all URLs display today’s date sends a contradictory signal: if everything has changed, nothing has changed. Google eventually ignores the field entirely for that domain.
Common errors with lastmod
- Updating lastmod after a cosmetic change (fixing a space, modifying the footer) without touching the editorial content of the page
- Regenerating the sitemap daily via a cron job that applies today’s date to all entries, even those unchanged for months
- Leaving lastmod empty on recently revamped pages, preventing Google from detecting the update
An accurate lastmod on an updated product page (new price, new stock, new description) speeds up the recrawl of that page. On a blog post republished with updated data, the effect is the same.
Filtering URLs: which pages to include in the sitemap
An effective sitemap does not list all the URLs of the site. It only contains pages that deserve to appear in search results. Each URL in the sitemap must return an HTTP 200 code and have a meta robots index tag.
Including noindex pages, 301 redirects, canonicalized URLs to other pages, or 404 error pages pollutes the file. The bot spends crawl budget on URLs that will never lead to indexing.
Pages to systematically exclude
- Internal search results pages, faceted filter pages, or deep pagination pages without unique content
- Pages protected by a login or redirecting to the login page
- URLs with tracking parameters (utm, session ID) that duplicate already existing pages without parameters
- Draft pages, staging pages, or pages accessible only via a preprod subdomain
On an e-commerce site with thousands of product listings, filtering becomes a regular task. Listings for permanently out-of-stock products, those that have returned a 404, or those that have been redirected must be removed from the sitemap with each update.
Sitemap index and content type segmentation
The protocol allows a maximum of 50,000 URLs per sitemap file. Beyond that, or when the site contains distinct content types (articles, products, images, videos), a sitemap index that references multiple sub-sitemaps facilitates diagnosis and tracking.
Segmenting by content type (one sitemap for articles, one for categories, one for product listings) allows for quick identification of which segment is causing an indexing issue in Google Search Console. If the indexing rate drops on the product sitemap but remains stable on the article sitemap, the problem is localized.
Specialized image and video sitemaps
Image and video sitemaps use extensions of the XML protocol. They signal to Google media embedded in pages, which improves their visibility in Google Images and Google Video. For a site whose traffic heavily relies on visuals (portfolio, fashion e-commerce, cooking recipes), a dedicated image sitemap increases the indexing surface without modifying the content of the pages.
The video sitemap requires specific metadata: title, description, thumbnail URL, duration. Without this information, Google does not consider the entry.
Submission and verification of the sitemap in Search Console
Declaring the sitemap in the robots.txt file via the Sitemap: directive followed by the absolute URL of the file remains the simplest and most universal method. It works for all engines compatible with the protocol.
Manual submission via Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools offers an additional advantage: a status report that indicates the number of submitted URLs, the number of indexed URLs, and any detected errors. The gap between submitted URLs and indexed URLs serves as the first quality indicator of the sitemap.
A persistent gap signals problematic URLs: duplicate content, thin content, pages blocked by robots.txt, or intermittent server errors. Correcting these gaps involves cleaning the sitemap as much as fixing the pages themselves.
Regularly checking this report, coupled with updating the sitemap after each batch of publications or deletions of pages, maintains consistency between the file and the actual state of the site. A sitemap that accurately reflects the indexable structure of a site provides Googlebot with a reliable map, and a reliable map shortens the path to indexing.
