SEO
Sitemap
A sitemap is an XML file that lists every URL on a website intended for search engines to index, along with metadata like last modification date and priority. It is the primary mechanism for telling Google and Bing what to crawl.
Part of Sitemap monitoring — the full answer, the facts and the alternatives in one place.
In depth
Sitemaps follow the sitemaps.org protocol and live at any URL, conventionally /sitemap.xml. Large sites split into a sitemap index pointing to multiple sub-sitemaps (max 50,000 URLs or 50 MB each). Each entry can carry `<lastmod>`, `<changefreq>`, and `<priority>`.
Sitemap discovery happens via robots.txt (`Sitemap:` directive), Google Search Console submission, Bing Webmaster Tools, and the IndexNow protocol for instant push notifications.
Why it matters
Without an accurate sitemap, search engines have to discover URLs by crawling internal links — slower, less reliable, and worse for newly published content. Keeping `<lastmod>` accurate is one of the strongest freshness signals in modern SEO.
How Lemwatch helps with sitemap
Lemwatch monitors sitemap continuously and alerts you the moment something changes.
Sitemap monitoring →Related terms
SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of structuring a website's content, code, and reputation so t…
robots.txt
robots.txt is a plain-text file at the root of a website that tells well-behaved web crawlers which URLs they …
Indexing
Indexing is the process by which a search engine adds a page to its searchable database after crawling it. A p…
IndexNow
IndexNow is an open protocol jointly developed by Microsoft and Yandex that lets websites instantly notify sea…
Schema Markup
Schema markup is structured data added to a webpage in JSON-LD format that describes the page's content in mac…
Browse the full Lemwatch monitoring glossary (47 terms).