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The Madison Avenue Field GuideA field guide to marketing & advertising, by Brandon Mina

GlossarySEO & ContentXML Sitemap

SEO & Content

XML Sitemap

A file listing a site's important URLs to help search engines discover and crawl them.

By Brandon MinaCEO, BrandPilot AIUpdated November 2026

Short answer

An XML sitemap is a file listing a site's important URLs to help search engines discover and crawl them. It can include details such as when pages were last updated. Sitemaps are especially useful for large, new or poorly linked sites, though inclusion does not guarantee that a page will be indexed.