Do I even need a sitemap?

It helps most when pages are not well linked internally, when the site is large, or when it is new and has few inbound links. It is a discovery aid, not a ranking factor — a page listed in a sitemap is not more likely to rank than one that is not.

Are changefreq and priority worth setting?

Google has ignored both since 2023, and priority never affected ranking even before that. Accurate loc and lastmod values are worth far more than a file padded with fields nobody reads, which is why this tool leaves them off by default.

How many URLs fit in one sitemap?

50,000, or 50 MB uncompressed, whichever comes first. Past that you need multiple files and a sitemap index listing them. This tool tells you when a list goes over rather than producing a file a crawler will reject.

Sitemap Generator

Paste your URLs and get valid sitemap XML, with duplicates and bad entries called out.

URLs

One URL per line

Optionally add lastmod, changefreq and priority after it

sitemap.xml

Valid XML appears here as you add URLs.

Options

lastmod

changefreq

priority

Google ignores changefreq and priority. They are here for the crawlers that still read them.

Defaults

lastmod

changefreq

priority

Applied only where a line has no value of its own.

Processed locally in your browser. URLs are parsed and the XML is built in this tab. R3X does not visit any of them.

Reference

Input format

One absolute URL per line. Anything after the URL on the same line is read as metadata, in any order: a date becomes lastmod, one of the seven known frequency words becomes changefreq, and a number between 0 and 1 becomes priority. Blank lines and lines starting with # are ignored, so you can keep notes in the list.

What the elements are worth

Element	Reality
loc	Required. Must be absolute, under 2048 characters, and on the host serving the sitemap.
lastmod	Used by Google, but only when it is consistently accurate. A file where every date is today is ignored.
changefreq	Ignored by Google since 2023. Some smaller crawlers still read it.
priority	Ignored by Google. It never affected ranking, only crawl ordering within your own site.

The tool leaves changefreq and priority off by default for that reason. A sitemap of accurate loc and lastmod values is worth more than one padded with fields nobody reads.

Limits

A single sitemap holds at most 50,000 URLs and 50 MB uncompressed. Past that you need several files and a sitemap index that lists them. The tool reports when a list goes over the URL limit rather than producing a file a crawler will reject.

A sitemap is only trusted for the host it is served from, which is why mixed hosts are flagged. Cross-host sitemaps are possible through Search Console verification, but they are not something to reach for by accident.

After you generate it

Save it at a stable URL, list that URL in robots.txt, and submit it once in Search Console. Re-submitting on every deploy achieves nothing; crawlers re-fetch a sitemap on their own schedule and use lastmod to decide what has changed.

Questions

Do I even need a sitemap?: It helps most when pages are not well linked internally, when the site is large, or when it is new and has few inbound links. It is a discovery aid, not a ranking factor — a page listed in a sitemap is not more likely to rank than one that is not.
Are changefreq and priority worth setting?: Google has ignored both since 2023, and priority never affected ranking even before that. Accurate loc and lastmod values are worth far more than a file padded with fields nobody reads, which is why this tool leaves them off by default.
How many URLs fit in one sitemap?: 50,000, or 50 MB uncompressed, whichever comes first. Past that you need multiple files and a sitemap index listing them. This tool tells you when a list goes over rather than producing a file a crawler will reject.