What is a Sitemap Index File?

A Sitemap Index file is a specialized XML file that acts as a container for other sitemaps. Instead of submitting dozens of individual sitemap URLs to Google Search Console, you can submit one single Sitemap Index. This is the industry-standard approach for large-scale websites, e-commerce platforms, and high-traffic blogs.

Why Do You Need a Sitemap Index?

Google and other major search engines impose a limit of 50,000 URLs or 50MB per individual sitemap file. If your website exceeds these limits, you must split your URLs into multiple files. A Sitemap Index allows you to:

• Simplify Submission: Submit only one URL to Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
• Organizational Structure: Group your URLs by category (e.g., posts, products, categories, images).
• Crawl Efficiency: Help search engine spiders identify which sitemaps have been updated recently using the lastmod tag.

How to Use This Generator

Simply list the full URLs of your individual XML sitemaps in the input box above. Our tool will automatically wrap them in the required <sitemapindex> tags and include the current date as the last modification attribute. Once generated, save the file as sitemap-index.xml and upload it to your root directory.