XML sitemap
Definition
A file listing a website's pages in a machine-readable format, submitted to help search engines and crawlers discover and prioritize content.
Why it matters
A current, accurate sitemap helps new or updated pages get discovered sooner, which matters for how quickly a change can appear in a platform that depends on a refreshed web index.
Example
After publishing a new product page, submitting an updated sitemap can shorten the time before it is crawled, compared to waiting for it to be found organically.
Related terms
Sources
AI crawler
An AI crawler is an automated program, run by an AI company, that fetches web pages to train models, build a search index or answer a user's request.
Optimization
llms.txt
llms.txt is a proposed convention for a plain text file at a site's root that summarises the site and links to its key pages for language models.
Keep learning
What is XML sitemap?
A file listing a website's pages in a machine-readable format, submitted to help search engines and crawlers discover and prioritize content.
Why does xml sitemap matter?
A current, accurate sitemap helps new or updated pages get discovered sooner, which matters for how quickly a change can appear in a platform that depends on a refreshed web index.
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