XML Sitemap Generator
Enter your website URL and pages to generate a ready-to-submit XML sitemap instantly.
Submit your sitemap to Google Search Console to help Google index your pages.
How to use XML Sitemap Generator
The Sitemap Generator creates XML sitemaps that help search engines discover and prioritise every page on your website. It produces standards-compliant XML following the Sitemap Protocol (sitemaps.org), supports all optional attributes (lastmod, changefreq, priority) and can generate both standard XML sitemaps and Sitemap Index files for large sites with more than 50,000 URLs.
- Enter your website's root URL (e.g., https://example.com).
- Add each URL you want to include — paste a list or enter them one at a time.
- For each URL, optionally set lastmod (last modification date), changefreq and priority (0.0–1.0).
- Enable the Sitemap Index option if you have multiple sitemap files to reference from a parent index.
- Click Generate to produce the XML output.
- Download the sitemap.xml file and upload it to your website root, then submit the URL to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
Your data never leaves your device — 100% private processing.
Sitemap XML structure and protocol
An XML sitemap begins with the <urlset> root element declaring the Sitemap Protocol namespace (xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"). Each URL is wrapped in a <url> element containing <loc> (required, the absolute URL), and optional <lastmod> (ISO 8601 date), <changefreq> (always/hourly/daily/weekly/monthly/yearly/never) and <priority> (0.1–1.0, default 0.5). A single sitemap file must not exceed 50 MB uncompressed and 50,000 URLs; larger sites use a Sitemap Index file that lists multiple sitemap files.
Priority, changefreq and their real impact
Contrary to popular belief, priority and changefreq are hints, not commands — Google has stated they give little weight to these values. The only reliable way to influence crawl frequency is to publish high-quality content frequently and build inbound links. lastmod is more useful: when it accurately reflects the actual last-modified date of the page content, search engines can use it to re-crawl updated pages sooner. Never set lastmod to the current date for pages that have not changed — this trains crawlers to distrust your sitemap.
| Value | Intended meaning | Typical use case |
|---|---|---|
| always | Changes on every request | Real-time feeds (not recommended) |
| hourly | Changes every hour | Breaking news, live prices |
| daily | Changes every day | Blog indexes, news sites |
| weekly | Changes every week | Feature pages, documentation |
| monthly | Changes every month | Product pages, category pages |
| yearly | Rarely changes | Legal pages, static content |
| never | Archived content | Historical articles, PDFs |
Glossary
- XML sitemap
- A structured file listing all URLs on a website to help search engine crawlers discover and index pages.
- Sitemap Index
- A sitemap that references multiple sitemap files, used when a site has more than 50,000 URLs or 50 MB.
- robots.txt
- A text file at the website root that instructs crawlers which pages to access; should reference the sitemap URL.
- Crawl budget
- The number of pages Googlebot crawls on a site within a given time frame; sitemaps help allocate it efficiently.
- GSC
- Google Search Console — Google's free tool for submitting sitemaps and monitoring indexing status.
Related reading
Frequently Asked Questions
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Why use XML Sitemap Generator?
- No installation — use directly from any browser
- Handles large inputs without crashing or timeouts
- Syntax highlighting and formatted output for readability
- Copy to clipboard shortcut for fast workflow integration
Common use cases
- Validate and format JSON responses from APIs
- Encode/decode Base64 strings during debugging
- Generate UUIDs for database seeds or test data
- Minify CSS or JavaScript before deployment
- Diff two code snippets to spot regressions
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