What format does a sitemap use?

A sitemap is an XML file following the sitemaps.org 0.9 schema. It has a urlset root and one url element per page, each with a loc and optional lastmod, changefreq, and priority.

How many URLs can a sitemap hold?

The protocol allows up to 50,000 URLs and 50 MB uncompressed per file. This builder caps input at 50 URLs for quick, focused sitemaps; split larger sites into multiple files.

What values can changefreq take?

changefreq accepts always, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, or never. It is a hint about how often a page changes, not a strict crawl schedule.

What does priority mean?

priority is a relative value from 0.0 to 1.0 indicating a URL's importance within your own site. It does not affect ranking against other sites and defaults to 0.5.

What format is lastmod?

lastmod uses W3C datetime, most often a plain date like 2026-06-06. It tells crawlers when the page last changed so they can prioritize recrawls.

sitemap.xml Builder — Gera Tools

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A valid XML sitemap in one paste

A sitemap lists the URLs you want search engines to discover and tells them how fresh and important each one is. This builder turns a plain list of URLs into a standards-compliant sitemap.xml with proper XML escaping, ready to copy or download.

How it works

The output follows the sitemaps.org 0.9 protocol. The root <urlset> carries the namespace http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9. Each URL you enter becomes a <url> element containing a <loc> with the address. The builder then applies your chosen defaults as <lastmod>, <changefreq>, and <priority> children. Special characters in URLs (&, <, >, ', ") are escaped to their XML entities so the file always parses. Blank lines are ignored and the list is capped at the first 50 URLs.

Tips and example

Always use absolute URLs with the protocol, like https://example.com/page. A generated entry looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <url>
    <loc>https://example.com/</loc>
    <lastmod>2026-06-06</lastmod>
    <changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
    <priority>1.0</priority>
  </url>
</urlset>

Place sitemap.xml at your domain root and add a Sitemap: line to robots.txt so crawlers find it. For sites over 50,000 URLs, generate several sitemaps and link them from a sitemap index.