# Sitemap

> What an XML sitemap contains, when it genuinely helps — and why it guarantees neither crawling, indexing nor ranking in search.

Synonyms: sitemap.xml, XML sitemap, sitemap index

Technically it is an XML file, often split by content type and language and discoverable through a line in robots.txt. It should not be maintained by hand: a decent system generates it itself, leaves drafts out and adds new pages on its own.

It helps most where internal linking is weak — freshly published pages, deeply nested content, multilingual sites with their own address per language. A search engine finds a lot without one, but later.

What a sitemap does not do: it guarantees neither crawling nor indexing nor ranking. It is an offer, not a claim — and an entry in it does not make a weak page strong.

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Source: https://btlabs.dev/en/glossary/sitemap
Last-Modified: 2026-09-02T08:02:11.430Z
Languages: [de](https://btlabs.dev/llms/de/glossary/sitemap) · [it](https://btlabs.dev/llms/it/glossary/sitemap)
See also: [llms.txt](https://btlabs.dev/llms.txt) · [ai.txt (Policy)](https://btlabs.dev/ai.txt) · [identity.json](https://btlabs.dev/identity.json)