Glossary

Sitemap & SEO glossary

Plain-English definitions of the sitemap and indexing terms that actually affect whether your pages get found.

Canonical URL

The single preferred URL for a piece of content when several URLs serve the same or similar page.

An optional sitemap hint for how often a page changes; Google largely ignores it today.

The number of URLs a search engine is willing and able to crawl on a site within a given period.

How many clicks a page sits from the homepage; deeper pages are found and crawled less readily.

The process by which search engine bots request and fetch pages by following links and reading sitemaps.

A Search Console status meaning Google knows a URL exists but has chosen not to crawl and index it yet.

An annotation that tells search engines which language and region a page targets, linking equivalent versions.

Sitemap markup that lists the images on each page so search engines can discover and index them.

The process by which a search engine stores and organizes a crawled page so it can appear in results.

A sitemap tag giving the date a URL last changed; Google uses it for scheduling recrawls when it is accurate.

A directive that tells search engines to keep a page out of their index while still allowing it to be crawled.

A page with no internal links pointing to it, making it hard for crawlers and users to discover.

A root-level text file that tells crawlers which paths they may or may not request.

A parent sitemap that points to multiple sitemap files, used when a site exceeds the single-file limits.

An optional 0.0–1.0 sitemap value ranking a URL against others on the same site; Google ignores it.

The open XML standard at sitemaps.org that defines the format and limits for sitemap files.

Telling search engines where your sitemap lives, via Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, or robots.txt.

A Google Search Console tool that reports the index status of a specific URL and why it is or is not indexed.

Sitemap markup that describes video content on a page so search engines can index and surface it.

An XML file that lists the URLs on a site so search engines can discover and crawl them more efficiently.

Want the deeper dives? Read the full guides.