{"id":16559,"date":"2026-09-02T11:35:46","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T08:35:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/google-bilgi-bankasi\/sitemaps-overview\/"},"modified":"2026-09-02T16:46:02","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T13:46:02","slug":"sitemaps-overview","status":"publish","type":"ar_kb","link":"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/google-bilgi-bankasi\/sitemaps-overview\/","title":{"rendered":"Sitemaps: What They Do and What They Do Not"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A sitemap is a discovery aid. It lists URLs you consider worth crawling and, optionally, when each was last modified. Google treats it as a hint, a strong one, but still a hint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">When a sitemap actually helps<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>The site is large and internal linking is shallow, so some pages are hard to reach by crawling.<\/li><li>The site is new and has few external links.<\/li><li>Pages are rich in media (video, images, news) that benefit from sitemap extensions.<\/li><li>Content changes often and you want <code>lastmod<\/code> to signal freshness.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">When it does not<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A small, well-linked site gains almost nothing. Listing a URL in a sitemap does not make Google index it, and removing a URL does not remove it from the index.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Rules that break sitemaps quietly<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Maximum 50,000 URLs and 50 MB uncompressed per file, split with a sitemap index above that.<\/li><li>Only include canonical, indexable URLs. Listing a <code>noindex<\/code> or redirected URL sends contradictory signals.<\/li><li><code>lastmod<\/code> must be accurate. If every URL updates its timestamp on every build, Google learns to ignore the field entirely.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"ar-kb-tavsiye\"><p><strong>Alien Road recommends:<\/strong> never generate <code>lastmod<\/code> from the build date. We see this on almost every site running a static generator: the whole sitemap gets today date on every deploy, the signal becomes worthless, and Google stops using it. Take the timestamp from the content record, or omit the field.<\/p><\/div>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A sitemap tells Google which URLs exist and when they changed. It does not force indexing, and it does not affect ranking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"menu_order":10,"template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"ar_kb_kategori":[501],"ar_kb_etiket":[532,558,557],"class_list":["post-16559","ar_kb","type-ar_kb","status-publish","hentry","ar_kb_kategori-sitemaps","ar_kb_etiket-crawling","ar_kb_etiket-discovery","ar_kb_etiket-sitemap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ar_kb\/16559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ar_kb"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/ar_kb"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ar_kb\/16559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23693,"href":"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ar_kb\/16559\/revisions\/23693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"ar_kb_kategori","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ar_kb_kategori?post=16559"},{"taxonomy":"ar_kb_etiket","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ar_kb_etiket?post=16559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}