What is Sitemap?
The short answer
A sitemap is a list of a website's pages: an XML file for search engines, or a page of links for people, that shows what exists and how it is organised.
Sitemap, explained
The XML sitemap tells crawlers every URL you want indexed and when it last changed. A human sitemap helps visitors find pages the navigation hides.
Questions people ask about Sitemap
What is Sitemap?
A sitemap is a list of a website's pages: an XML file for search engines, or a page of links for people, that shows what exists and how it is organised.
Related terms
An XML sitemap is a machine-readable file listing a site's URLs, and when each last changed, submitted to search engines to help them discover pages.
CrawlingCrawling is how search engines discover pages: automated bots follow links and sitemaps, fetch pages and pass them on to be analysed and indexed.
IndexingIndexing is when a search engine stores a crawled page in its database so it can appear in results; a page that is not indexed cannot rank.
Information architectureInformation architecture is how a site's content is organised, grouped and labelled so people can find things and understand where they are.
Part of the Web Encyclopedia by Apex Flow Digital. Definitions are general knowledge, kept current, with no invented statistics.