Understanding Sitemaps
This section provides an introduction to search engines' use of sitemaps. For additional information, see the resources listed at the end of this topic.
The following snippet is an example of a sitemap.
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:image="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-image/1.1" xmlns:video="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-video/1.1" xmlns:news="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-news/0.9" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9 http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9/sitemap.xsd">
<url>
<loc>/brightspot-cms</loc>
<lastmod>2019-11-25</lastmod>
</url>
<url>
<video:video>
<video:thumbnail_loc>/thumbnails/cms-demo.jpg</video:thumbnail_loc>
<video:title>Brightspot CMS moves your business forward</video:title>
<video:description>Brightspot CMS enables you to create enterprise
applications at scale and with astonishing speed.</video:description>
<video:content_loc>/cms-demo</video:content_loc>
<video:duration>1209</video:duration>
</video:video>
</url>
</urlset>-
Indicates there is a published item with the URL
/brightspot-cms. If the search engine indexed the item before November 25, 2019, it reindexes the item. -
Indicates there is a video published at
/cms-demo.- The recommended title for the search engine to display in search results is
Brightspot CMS moves your business forward. - The recommended description for the search engine to display is
Brightspot CMS enables you to create enterprise applications at scale and with astonishing speed. - The recommended thumbnail to include in the search results is
/thumbnails/cms-demo.jpg. - The duration to include in the search results is 1,209 seconds (about 20 minutes).
- The recommended title for the search engine to display in search results is
Search engines may choose to incorporate a sitemap's elements in their results, modify them, or ignore them.
If you publish a high-volume site, you probably add and modify dozens of items every day, and possibly archive older items. Such high volumes can make for enormous sitemaps with unreasonably frequent updates. Brightspot simplifies the management of sitemap updates by using partitions based on content type.
Year-month sitemap partitions
The year-month partitions separate your sitemap items into monthly buckets based on an item鈥檚 publication date.
Referring to the previous illustration鈥�
- The parent sitemap is named
sitemap.xml. It has 13 entries for year-month sitemaps. - Each monthly sitemap contains individual sitemap entries.
- The sitemap
sitemap-latest.xmlcontains entries newer than the most recently monthly sitemap.
The year-month partition strategy applies to all content types except articles, blog posts, and press releases.
Single-file sitemap partitions
Some content types have high volume but a short time of interest, such as weather or traffic reports. To ensure the sitemaps for these items remain updated, Brightspot organizes them into two separate files.
Referring to the previous illustration:
- The parent sitemap is named
sitemap.xml. It has two entries for subsidiary sitemaps. - The sitemap
news-sitemap-content.xmlcontains items published in the past two days. - The sitemap
sitemap-latest.xmlcontains items published in the past six hours.
Brightspot automatically updates sitemaps based on the type of sitemap. Standard and video sitemaps update somewhat frequently over longer periods of time, and news sitemaps update very frequently over shorter periods of time.
| Sitemap Types | Video, Standard | News |
|---|---|---|
| Content types included in sitemap | Author, blog, homepage, package, page, section, tag, video | Article, blog post, press release |
| Partition strategy | Year-Month | Single |
| Update frequency |
|
|
| Time since item publication after which Brightspot does not update sitemaps. | 20 years | 2 days |
See also: