The Uncomfortable Truth About Priority and Changefreq
Google has publicly confirmed it ignores the <priority> and <changefreq> fields. Its crawl scheduler uses its own internal signals to determine revisit frequency. Build a correctly structured sitemap — including these fields for other search engines that do use them — with our XML Sitemap Priority Allocator.
What Google Actually Uses From Your Sitemap
<loc>: The canonical URL. Ensure every URL exactly matches the canonical tag on the corresponding page — no trailing slash mismatches, no HTTP vs. HTTPS conflicts.<lastmod>: Google does use lastmod, but only when dates are accurate and updated. A lastmod that changes on every build when content has not changed actively misleads the crawler and wastes crawl budget.
Sitemap Index Files for Large Sites
A single sitemap file is limited to 50,000 URLs or 50MB uncompressed. Sites exceeding either limit need a sitemap index file. Organise child sitemaps by content type: one for blog posts, one for product pages, one for category pages. This lets you monitor crawl coverage by content type in Google Search Console.
Keeping Your Sitemap Clean
Never include URLs carrying a noindex directive, canonical tags pointing elsewhere, redirect chains, or 4xx/5xx status codes. Including non-indexable URLs sends contradictory signals. Audit your sitemap quarterly and remove any URL that does not return a 200 status with a self-referencing canonical.