A sitemap is a list of all the pages on your website, written in a format Google can read, that says “here is everything I have, please go and look at it”.
That’s it. It’s a contents page for machines.
It sounds like something you’d never need to think about, and for plenty of small sites that’s true. But it’s one of the handful of things that occasionally explains why a website nobody can find has been sitting there invisible for months. So it’s worth ten minutes of your attention.
Why Google needs a list at all
Google finds pages by following links. It lands on your homepage, follows the link to your services page, follows the link from there to your contact page, and so on. That process is called crawling, and most of the time it works fine.
Where it falls down is when a page has no links pointing at it. Maybe you built a landing page for a campaign and never added it to the menu. Maybe your blog archive only goes back three pages and the older posts are stranded. Maybe your site is new and nothing anywhere on the internet links to it yet, so Google has no route in at all.
A sitemap closes those gaps. Instead of hoping Google stumbles across everything, you hand it the full list.
What one actually looks like
If you go and look at yours, you’ll find something that looks like code. It usually lives at yourdomain.co.uk/sitemap.xml or yourdomain.co.uk/sitemap_index.xml, and it’s a long list of web addresses, sometimes with the date each page was last changed.
You are not meant to read it. It isn’t for you. The “XML” in the name just means it’s structured for software rather than for people.
There is a second kind, sometimes called an HTML sitemap, which is a human-readable page listing your site’s sections. Those are occasionally useful for big sites. They are not the thing Google asks for, and you almost certainly don’t need one.
How to check you’ve got one
Two minutes, no tools:
- Type your domain into the address bar followed by
/sitemap.xmland press enter. If you get a wall of addresses, you have one. - If that gives you a “page not found”, try
/sitemap_index.xml. Some platforms use that instead, and it points to several smaller sitemaps. - Still nothing? Try
yourdomain.co.uk/robots.txt. Most sites name their sitemap location in that file.
If all three come up empty, you probably don’t have one, and that’s worth fixing.
Do you already have one without knowing?
Almost certainly, yes.
If your site is built on WordPress with Yoast, Rank Math or All In One SEO installed, a sitemap is generated automatically and updated every time you add a page. Squarespace, Wix and Shopify all create one by default. You didn’t do anything and it’s there.
This is why I’d rather you didn’t pay anyone to “create and submit your sitemap” as a line item. On a standard small business website it is a setting, not a project. If someone has quoted you for it as meaningful work, ask them what they’ll actually be doing.
Having one is not the same as Google knowing about it
This is the part people miss.
A sitemap sitting on your server does some good, because Google will usually find it via your robots.txt file. But the stronger move is to submit it directly through Google Search Console, which is Google’s free tool for site owners. You add your site, you go to the Sitemaps section, you paste in the address, you press submit.
Search Console then tells you something genuinely useful: how many addresses it found in your sitemap, and how many of those it actually indexed. When those two numbers are miles apart, you’ve learned something. Google has seen your pages and chosen not to include some of them, which is a different and more interesting problem than Google never having found them.
When a sitemap really matters
It matters most when:
- Your site is brand new and has no links pointing at it from anywhere else
- You have a lot of pages, say a few hundred or more
- You’ve just launched a redesign and the addresses have all changed
- You have pages that aren’t linked from your menu
- You run an online shop where products come and go
It matters least when you’re a ten-page local business site with a sensible menu and a few links from suppliers and directories. Google will find those ten pages whether you help it or not.
What a sitemap will not do
I want to be clear about this, because it gets oversold.
A sitemap is an invitation, not an instruction. Google is under no obligation to index a page just because you listed it. If a page is thin, duplicated or not useful to anyone, putting it in a sitemap doesn’t change Google’s mind.
It also has nothing to do with ranking. Nobody has ever moved from page four to page one by submitting a sitemap. It’s a plumbing job: it helps Google find things, and finding is the step before ranking, not a substitute for it.
So if your website isn’t bringing you enquiries and someone tells you the sitemap is the problem, be sceptical. It’s occasionally the answer and usually not.
The mistakes I see
Listing pages you’ve blocked.
A sitemap that includes pages marked “don’t index me” sends Google mixed messages. Search Console will flag it.
A sitemap that never updates.
Hand-built ones go stale within weeks. Let your platform generate it.
Old addresses after a redesign.
If your sitemap still lists the pages from the site you replaced, Google keeps being sent to dead ends.
Thinking it’s a strategy.
It’s a ten-minute setup task you do once and then forget about.
The thing this is part of
Sitemaps, crawling, indexing, page titles, making your site fast enough to use on a phone: all of it sits under one heading. It’s called SEO, search engine optimisation, and it’s the work of making Google able to find you, understand you and then choose you.
The sitemap is the least glamorous end of it. It’s also the end that occasionally explains everything.
What to do today
Visit yourdomain.co.uk/sitemap.xml. If it’s there, open Search Console and check that your sitemap is submitted and that the number of indexed pages roughly matches the number of pages you actually have. If it isn’t there, whoever maintains your site can switch it on this afternoon.
If you’d rather someone just looked, send me your business name and postcode and I’ll run you a free audit. I’ll tell you whether your pages are being found, how many Google has actually indexed, and what’s worth fixing first. If your sitemap is fine and the real problem is somewhere else, I’ll say so.
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