Sitemap extensions

Image sitemaps

Image sitemaps are a way of telling Google about other images on your site, especially those that
we might not otherwise find (such as images your site reaches with JavaScript code). You can
create a separate image sitemap or add image sitemap tags to your existing sitemap; either
approach is equally fine for Google.

Image sitemaps are based on generic sitemaps so the
general sitemap best practices
also apply to image sitemaps. We also recommend that you follow the
general best practices for publishing images.

Example image sitemap

The following example shows a regular sitemap with image sitemap extension, with two
<url> elements:

  • https://example.com/sample1.html, which contains two images
  • https://example.com/sample2.html, which contains one image

Image sitemap reference

The image tags are defined in the Image Sitemaps namespace:
http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-image/1.1

To make sure Google can use your image sitemap, you must use the following required tags:

Required tags
<image:image>Encloses all information about a single image. Each <url> tag can
contain up to 1,000 <image:image> tags.
<image:loc>

The URL of the image.

In some cases, the image URL may not be on the same domain as your main site. This is
fine, as long as you verify both domains in Search Console. If, for example, you use
a content delivery network such as Google Sites to host your images, make sure that
the hosting site is verified in Search Console. In addition, make sure that your
robots.txt file doesn’t
disallow the crawling of any content you want indexed.

Troubleshooting sitemaps

If you’re having trouble with your sitemap, you can investigate the errors with Google Search Console.
See Search Console’s
sitemaps troubleshooting guide
for help.

Additional resources

Want to learn more? Check out the following resources:

Alien Road

So setzen wir das um

Image sitemaps matter for sites where images are the product. We add them for portfolio, ecommerce and publishing clients, and skip them where images are decorative.

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