Sitemap guidelines

Sitemap index file must be UTF-8 encoded.

A single Sitemap file cannot list more than 50,000 URLs and must be no larger than 10MB (10,485,760 bytes) when uncompressed.

If you want to include more URLs or If you do provide multiple Sitemaps use a “Sitemap index” file ( as http://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap_index.xml). A Sitemap index file can list up to 50,000 Sitemaps.

Do not include session IDs in URLs.

Do not include direct image URLs in Sitemaps

The XML format of a Sitemap index file is very similar to the XML format of a Sitemap file. The Sitemap index file must:

<sitemapindex> – the parent tag surrounds the file.
<sitemap> – the parent tag for each Sitemap listed in the file (a child of <sitemapindex>)
<loc> – the location of the sitemap (a child of <sitemap>)
<lastmod> – the last modified date of the sitemap (optional)

The Sample XML Sitemap Index

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
   <sitemapindex xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
   <sitemap>
      <loc>http://www.example.com/sitemap1.xml.gz</loc>
      <lastmod>2004-10-01T18:23:17+00:00</lastmod>
   </sitemap>
   <sitemap>
      <loc>http://www.example.com/sitemap2.xml.gz</loc>
      <lastmod>2005-01-01</lastmod>
   </sitemap>
   </sitemapindex>