How many URLs can one sitemap have?

Up to 50,000 URLs and 50 MB uncompressed. Larger sites split URLs across several files and tie them together with a sitemap index.

Does Google use priority and changefreq?

No, Google ignores them. It does use lastmod if it's reliable — that is, if it only changes when the content actually changes.

Does a sitemap guarantee indexing?

No. It helps Google discover URLs, but indexing depends on how the page is assessed. A URL in the sitemap can still end up as “discovered” or “crawled – currently not indexed”.

XML sitemap (sitemap.xml)

An XML sitemap is a file listing the URLs you want search engines to know about and crawl. It helps Google find new and updated pages faster, especially on large sites. It should contain only canonical URLs that return 200 — no redirects, errors or noindex pages.

What a sitemap looks like

<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">

<url><loc>https://shop.com/sofas/</loc><lastmod>2026-10-14</lastmod></url>

</urlset>

Large sites use a sitemap index — a file that points to further sitemap files (for example products, categories and articles separately).

What to include and what not

Include	Leave out
canonical URLs returning 200	redirecting URLs
pages you want in results	noindex pages
current URLs (https, the right www version)	parameter and filter URLs
	404 and 5xx pages

Where to put it and how to submit it

Usually at the root: /sitemap.xml or /sitemap_index.xml. Reference it in robots.txt with a Sitemap: line and submit it in Google Search Console (Sitemaps). If Search Console shows an error, see “Sitemap could not be read”.

Common mistakes

after a store update, the generator starts skipping products — the URL count suddenly drops,
old URLs stay in the sitemap after a migration and now redirect,
lastmod set to today's date on every generation — Google stops trusting it,
the sitemap is blocked in robots.txt or by a firewall,
the server returns an HTML page with 200 instead of XML.

Monitoring sitemaps

A sudden drop in the number of URLs in a sitemap is often the first trace of a broken generator or category changes.

IndexRise checks your project's sitemap files every night: it reports a file that disappeared, a file that can't be read, drops and increases in the URL count (10% by default) and new files in a sitemap index.