Select Language:
Many SEOs have long adopted the practice of dividing their XML sitemap files into different categories, often based on site structure and specific needs. This approach is used for various reasons, depending on the nature of the website.
A question was raised on a popular online community about why website owners choose to split their sitemaps. In response, John Mueller from Google shared several common reasons he has observed over the years:
– To organize URLs into distinct groups, such as separating product detail pages from product categories, which can also be somewhat managed through the page indexing report.
– To manage content freshness by creating separate sitemaps for evergreen or periodically updated content, which might help search engines prioritize crawling newer content more efficiently.
– To proactively prevent reaching the 50,000 URL limit per sitemap, making future management easier without worrying about urgent restructuring.
– To handle hreflang sitemaps that can become very large, especially when dealing with numerous language and regional versions.
– And humorously, that sometimes the reason is simply because a developer’s computer automatically created the split, with no specific strategic intent.
These are just some of the reasons why SEO professionals might choose to organize their sitemaps this way, as shared by John Mueller during a forum discussion.
ChatGPT
Perplexity
Gemini AI
Grok AI
