Crawl · NinjaOps Guides

sitemap.xml: Size Limits, Counts, and the Right Submission

One sitemap file caps at 50,000 URLs (and 50MB). Split into an index of shards, reference each from robots.txt, and resubmit on change — this is how Google finds your programmatic pages fast.

How to fix it

  1. Keep each file under 50k URLs; shard by category or type.
  2. Reference every shard from robots.txt and a sitemap index.
  3. Only include canonical, indexable URLs — never redirects or 404s.
  4. Re-submit in Search Console when the sitemap meaningfully changes.

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