View source for Site map

{{pp-semi-indef|small=yes}}
{{Short description|List of pages of a web site}}
A '''sitemap''' is a list of [[Web page|pages]] of a web site within a [[Domain name|domain]].

There are three primary kinds of sitemap:
* Sitemaps used during the planning of a website by its [[Web design|designers]]
* Human-visible listings, typically hierarchical, of the pages on a site
* Structured listings intended for [[Web crawler|web crawler]]s such as [[Web search engine|search engines]]

== Types of sitemaps ==
[[File:Main Page Usability.png|thumb|right|500px|A sitemap of what links from the English Wikipedia's Main Page]]
[[File:sitemap google.jpg|400px|thumb|Sitemap of Google in 2006]]

Sitemaps may be addressed to users or to software.

Many sites have user-visible sitemaps which present a systematic view, typically hierarchical, of the site. These are intended to help visitors find specific pages, and can also be used by crawlers. They also act as a navigation aid<ref>[http://www.nngroup.com/articles/site-map-usability/ Sitemap Usability] Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, August 12, 2008</ref> by providing an overview of a site's content at a single glance.
Alphabetically organized sitemaps, sometimes called site indexes, are a different approach.

For use by search engines and other crawlers, there is a structured format, the [[XML]] Sitemap, which lists the pages in a site, their relative importance, and how often they are updated.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Nadik |first=Tessa |date=2023-02-09 |title=What Is A Sitemap? Do I Need One? |url=https://www.searchenginejournal.com/what-is-a-sitemap/478071/ |access-date=2023-09-16 |website=Search Engine Journal |language=en}}</ref> This is pointed to from the [[Robots exclusion standard|robots.txt file]] and is typically called '''sitemap.xml'''. The structured format is particularly important for websites which include pages that are not accessible through [[Hyperlink|links]] from other pages, but only through the site's search tools or by dynamic construction of [[URL|URLs]] in [[JavaScript]].

== XML sitemaps ==
{{Main article|Sitemaps}}
[[Company:Google|Google]] introduced [[Sitemaps|the Sitemaps protocol]] so web developers can publish lists of links from across their sites. The basic premise is that some sites have a large number of dynamic pages that are only available through the use of forms and user entries. The Sitemap files contain URLs to these pages so that web crawlers can find them. Bing, Google, Yahoo and [[Software:Ask.com|Ask]] now jointly support the Sitemaps protocol.

Since the major [[Search engine|search engine]]s use the same protocol,<ref name="Oreilly">{{cite web|publisher=Oreilly|url=http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2006/11/google_yahoo_microsoft_standar.html|title=Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft Standardize Against Google Sitemap Protocol|access-date=2012-07-24}}</ref> having a Sitemap lets them have the updated page information. Sitemaps do not guarantee all links will be crawled, and being crawled does not guarantee indexing.<ref>[http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/sitemapsorg.html Joint announcement] from Google, Yahoo, and Bing supporting Sitemaps</ref> Google Webmaster Tools allow a website owner to upload a sitemap that Google will crawl, or they can accomplish the same thing with the robots.txt file.<ref name="Google">{{cite web|publisher=Google Inc.|url=https://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=183669&topic=8476&ctx=topic|title=Submitting Sitemaps|access-date=2012-07-06}}</ref>

=== Sample ===
Below is an example of a validated XML sitemap for a simple three-page website. Sitemaps are a useful tool for making sites searchable, particularly those written in non-HTML languages. 

<source lang="xml">
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.net/?id=who</loc>
    <lastmod>2009-09-22</lastmod>
    <changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
    <priority>0.8</priority>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.net/?id=what</loc>
    <lastmod>2009-09-22</lastmod>
    <changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
    <priority>0.5</priority>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.net/?id=how</loc>
    <lastmod>2009-09-22</lastmod>
    <changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
    <priority>0.5</priority>
  </url>
</urlset>
</source>

== See also ==
{{div col}}
* [[Biositemap]], a protocol for broadcasting and disseminating information about [[Biology:Computational biology|computational biology]] resources (data, software tools and web-services)
* [[Contact page]]
* [[Home page]]
* Index (search engine)
* [[Link page]]
* [[Search engine optimization]]
* [[Web indexing]]
{{div col end}}

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

== External links ==
* [http://www.sitemaps.org/ Common Official Website] - Jointly maintained website by Google, Yahoo, MSN for an XML sitemap format.
* {{dmoz|Computers/Internet/Searching/Search_Engines/Sitemaps | Sitemap generators}}

{{Subject bar |portal1= Internet }}

[[Category:Search engine optimization]]

{{Sourceattribution|Site map}}