Sitemap index
Encyclopedia
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. 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.
encoded.
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:
The should be the complete URL to the Sitemap index, such as: http://www.example.org/sitemap_index.xml
The Sitemap index file must:
The optional tag is also available for Sitemap index files.
Time format for
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:
In order to validate your Sitemap or Sitemap index file against a schema, the XML file will need additional headers.
XML
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
file that lists multiple XML or RSS
RSS
-Mathematics:* Root-sum-square, the square root of the sum of the squares of the elements of a data set* Residual sum of squares in statistics-Technology:* RSS , "Really Simple Syndication" or "Rich Site Summary", a family of web feed formats...
sitemap files. The XML format of a Sitemap index file is very similar to the XML format of a Sitemap file. 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.
XML Sitemap index Format
The Sitemap Protocol format consists of XML tags. The file itself must be UTF-8UTF-8
UTF-8 is a multibyte character encoding for Unicode. Like UTF-16 and UTF-32, UTF-8 can represent every character in the Unicode character set. Unlike them, it is backward-compatible with ASCII and avoids the complications of endianness and byte order marks...
encoded.
Sample
The following example shows a Sitemap index that lists two Sitemaps:
http://www.example.com/sitemap1.xml.gz
2004-10-01T18:23:17+00:00
http://www.example.com/sitemap2.xml.gz
2005-01-01
Submitting Sitemaps
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Google Google Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program... |
|
How do I resubmit my Sitemap once it has changed? |
| Bing (Formerly Live Search) | |
Webmaster Tools - Bing |
| Ask.com Ask.com Ask is a Q&A focused search engine founded in 1996 by Garrett Gruener and David Warthen in Berkeley, California. The original software was implemented by Gary Chevsky from his own design. Warthen, Chevsky, Justin Grant, and others built the early AskJeeves.com website around that core engine... |
|
Q: Does Ask.com support sitemaps? |
| Yahoo! Yahoo! Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,... (Disabled as of September 2011 due to Yahoo now using Bing's Search Database) |
|
Does Yahoo! support Sitemaps? Site Explorer API: Notifying Yahoo of Changes |
| Yandex Yandex Yandex is a Russian IT company which operates the largest search engine in Russia and develops a number of Internet-based services and products. Yandex is ranked as 5-th world largest search engine... |
— | Sitemaps files (in Russian) |
| Didikle (Turkish Mobile Search Engine) | |
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:
The
Sitemap Limits
Sitemap index files may not list more than 50,000 Sitemaps and must be no larger than 10 MB (10,485,760 bytes). You can have more than one Sitemap index file. 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:
- Begin with an opening
tag and end with a closing tag. - Include a
entry for each Sitemap as a parent XML tag. - Include a
child entry for each parent tag.
The optional
Time format for tag
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
ISO 8601
ISO 8601 Data elements and interchange formats – Information interchange – Representation of dates and times is an international standard covering the exchange of date and time-related data. It was issued by the International Organization for Standardization and was first published in 1988...
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 |
Validating Sitemap index
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.