A Sitemap index is an XML file that lists multiple XML or RSS sitemap files. The XML format of a Sitemap index file is very similar to the XML format of a Sitemap file.[1] It allows webmasters to include additional information about each sitemap (when it was last updated). After creation of a Sitemap index file webmasters can notify search engines about the index file, and the other sitemaps that are included in the Sitemap index file will be automatically notified too.[2]
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The Sitemap Protocol format consists of XML tags. The file itself must be UTF-8 encoded.
The following example shows a Sitemap index that lists two Sitemaps:
<?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>
If Sitemaps are submitted directly to a search engine, it will return status information and any processing errors. Refer to Google Webmaster Tools or Yahoo SiteExplorer.
| Search engine | Submission URL | Help page |
|---|---|---|
| http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap= | How do I resubmit my Sitemap once it has changed? | |
| Bing (Formerly Live Search) | http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?siteMap= | Webmaster Tools - Bing |
| Ask.com | http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap= | Q: Does Ask.com support sitemaps? |
| Yahoo! (Disabled as of September 2011 due to Yahoo now using Bing's Search Database) |
http://search.yahooapis.com/SiteExplorerService/V1/updateNotification?appid=SitemapWriter&url= http://search.yahooapis.com/SiteExplorerService/V1/ping?sitemap= |
Does Yahoo! support Sitemaps? Site Explorer API: Notifying Yahoo of Changes |
| Yandex | — | Sitemaps files (in Russian) |
| Didikle (Turkish Mobile Search Engine) | http://www.didikle.com/ping?sitemap= | Sitemap and robots.txt info (in Turkish) |
Also, the location of the Sitemap index can be specified using a robots.txt file to help search engines find the Sitemap index files. To do this, the following lines need to be added to robots.txt:
Sitemap: <sitemap_index_location>
The <sitemap_index_location> should be the complete URL to the Sitemap index, such as: http://www.example.org/sitemap_index.xml
Sitemap index files may not list more than 50,000 Sitemaps and must be no larger than 10 MB (10,485,760 bytes).[1] You can have more than one Sitemap index file.[1] However, Sitemap index files may not list other Sitemap index files. Therefore, the most pages a single Sitemap index can index is 2,500,000,000.
The Sitemap index file must:
The optional <lastmod> tag is also available for Sitemap index files.
The value for the lastmod tag should be in W3C Datetime format. For example, 2007-08-25T00:00:00+00:00. This encoding allows the omission of the time portion of the ISO 8601 format; for example, 2007-08-25 is also valid.
Available time formats:
| Format | Example |
|---|---|
| YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssTZD | 2007-08-25T00:00:00+00:00 |
| YYYY-MM-DDThh:mmTZD | 2007-08-25T00:00+00:00 |
| YYYY-MM-DD | 2007-08-25 |
Google uses an XML schema to define the elements and attributes that can appear in Sitemap index file.
In order to validate your Sitemap or Sitemap index file against a schema, the XML file will need additional headers.