XML sitemap generator: questions and guides
Each guide here answers one question with a practical example, then takes you to the tool to try it yourself. Guides: 11.
Questions
- How to create a sitemap.xmlWhat a sitemap is and why it helps search engines find your pages, and how to build a valid sitemap.xml from a list of links, Arabic links included.
- My store is on Salla, Zid or Shopify. Do I need to make a sitemap myself, or does the platform create one? When would I need this tool?Hosted platforms usually generate a sitemap, and you usually cannot replace it. How to check what your platform serves, and when this tool is actually the right fit.
- I have my site's page links in an Excel column, with a last-modified date next to each. How do I turn that into a sitemap.xml file?Copy the URL and date columns as lines, or save them as a CSV and upload it. A header row is skipped, dates are year first, and a line with no date gets no lastmod.
- The tool rejected some lines in my list, such as /about and example.com/shop. How do I fix them?A sitemap needs complete URLs starting with https://. How to read each rejected line's number and reason, and fix relative, schemeless and spaced links.
- My link list has some URLs with www and some without. Which ones should I keep in the sitemap?Every URL in a sitemap should sit on the host the file is uploaded to. How to find the version your site opens on, and how the tool counts each host and keeps one.
- I wrote the last-modified date as 01/03/2026 and it did not come out as a date. What date format does a sitemap accept?Sitemaps use the W3C format, year first: 2026-03-01. Why a day-first date sticks to the URL, when a line is rejected, and how to write a time and time zone.
- Should I add colour, size and filter URLs like ?color=red&size=12 to my sitemap?Usually not: filters create many addresses for one page, and a sitemap lists the version you want in search. When a parameter URL earns a place, and how XML writes &.
- My site has more than 50,000 URLs. How do I upload the split sitemap files and the index so they point to the right place?Past 50,000 URLs or 50 MB the tool splits the list into sitemap-1.xml onward plus sitemap-index.xml in a ZIP. Why the folder address must match the upload place exactly.
- I pasted 120 links but the sitemap came out with only 97. Where did the rest go?Three things shrink the count: exact duplicates, links that differ only by a #fragment, and rejected lines. How to read the summary so no page you need goes missing.
- I have a wholesale price page I do not want everyone to see. Is it safe to put it in my sitemap?No. A sitemap is a public file anyone can read, so every URL in it is announced. Why an unlisted link does not protect a page, and what actually does.
- What is the difference between a sitemap and a robots.txt file, and does my small site need both?A sitemap lists what you want found; robots.txt asks crawlers to skip paths and can point to the sitemap in one line. What a small site actually needs.