XML Sitemap
Definition
An XML sitemap is a machine-readable list of a site's URLs with their last-modified dates, published so search engines can find every page without depending on links. Large sites split it into an index that points to several files. For a store it should list only live, indexable products, categories, and pages, and update when the catalog changes.
Why it matters for your store
A new product with no links pointing at it can take weeks to be discovered by crawling alone. The sitemap tells the search engine it exists, when it changed, and where to find it. For stores with thousands of products and frequent changes, it is the main way new and updated pages get crawled promptly.
A bad sitemap does harm. Listing draft pages, redirected URLs, or pages marked noindex wastes crawl budget and sends mixed signals. A sitemap generated on the fly from a large catalog can also be slow enough to time out. It should be built in the background and served as a file.
How Kambloo handles it
Each store gets an automatic sitemap index with separate files for products, categories, pages, and blog posts, built in a background queue and stored on object storage rather than generated on request. Files are split to stay within the 50,000-URL limit.
Only published, indexable records are included. Last-modified dates come from the record, and priorities reflect page type and sales volume. When the store has more than one language, each URL entry carries hreflang alternates for the languages that actually have a translation.
Regeneration is triggered by catalog events with a fifteen-minute debounce, so a bulk import does not rebuild the file hundreds of times, and a nightly job rebuilds every live store as a safety net. At go-live the sitemap is rebuilt with the new domain and submitted. Test stores do not get a sitemap, because they are not indexable.
Questions about XML Sitemap
How often should a store's sitemap update?
Whenever products or categories are added, removed, or renamed. Kambloo regenerates it within about fifteen minutes of a catalog change and once every night as a safety net.
Should out-of-stock or draft products be in the sitemap?
Drafts, no. Out-of-stock products that stay published can remain, because their page still exists and may come back in stock. Only published, indexable records belong in the file.