What is Sitemap (XML)?
Turkish: Sitemap
A sitemap is an XML roadmap that tells search engines about indexable URLs, last modification dates, and alternate language versions.
What is a Sitemap?
A sitemap is an XML file that lists important URLs on a website for search engines. It is designed for crawlers rather than human navigation, making it clearer which pages should be discovered.
A sitemap does not guarantee indexing. The page must still avoid noindex, must not be blocked by robots.txt, should have correct canonical signals, and must be worth indexing.
What Does a Sitemap Contain?
- URL: The canonical address of the page intended for indexing.
- lastmod: The date of the last meaningful page update.
- hreflang: Alternate language versions for multilingual sites.
- Image, video, or news sitemap: Extra data for specific content types.
- Sitemap index: A file that lists multiple sitemap files for large sites.
Business Use
Sitemaps are especially important for e-commerce, news, multilingual corporate sites, and frequently updated catalogs. New product pages, removed URLs, and language alternatives can be communicated to search engines more consistently.
A robots.txt file can point to the sitemap URL, and tools such as Search Console can submit it directly. In technical SEO, the sitemap should be checked regularly so it contains only indexable canonical pages that return successful responses.
Related Terms
Crawl budget is the crawl capacity and priority a search engine gives a site, affecting which URLs are discovered and refreshed.
Google Search ConsoleGoogle Search Console is a free tool for monitoring search performance, indexing status, and technical SEO issues.
Index CoverageIndex coverage shows in Search Console whether URLs are indexed by Google, not indexed, or excluded, and explains the reason.
robots.txtrobots.txt is a plain text file at a site's root that tells search engine crawlers which URL areas they may or may not crawl.
Technical SEOTechnical SEO improves site infrastructure so search engines can crawl, render, index, and evaluate pages quickly and reliably.