XML Sitemap Definition & Meaning

What Is An XML Sitemap?

An XML sitemap is a file on a web server that uses Extensible Markup Language (XML) to provide information about the pages, images, videos, and other files on the domain and the relationships between them.

Sites with a high number of pages, vast amounts of links, images, or videos rely on XML sitemaps to improve crawlability. Web crawlers use the data in an XML sitemap to get an overview of the website’s structure to efficiently crawl it for information.

XML sitemaps can be submitted in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools to inform the search engines about the important web pages and files on your site so they do not get ignored by the crawlers.

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