Generate Sitemaps

Sitemaps are a standardized way to tell search engines about pages on your site that they might not otherwise discover during their normal crawling process.

1. Select site > Merchant Tools > SEO > Sitemaps.
2. On the Sitemaps page, Files tab (default), a list of sitemap files appear with creation date and time. This includes sitemap index files and custom sitemaps.

   An existing sitemap is preserved until a new sitemap is successfully generated in the background.

   Sitemap files include URLs for each asset for all allowed site locales. Links for all allowed site locales are included as a sitemap entry, and for each entry, all allowed locales are listed as alternate links (if enabled).

   1. Select the Host to view the sitemaps by host.

      If no hosts are available, you must configure them in the hostname alias file.

   2. Click Download to download all sitemap files, based on host selection.
      Sitemap files are linked to the storefront location.
3. Click the Custom Sitemaps tab.
   A list of custom sitemap files appears.

   Note: Custom Sitemaps are not meant to override, and will not override, the system-generated sitemaps. They are intended to add additional URLs to sitemap.
   The Custom Sitemap system will:

   • create a sitemap_index.xml with a link to sitemap_0.xml
   • create the HomeURLs for the site and put them in sitemap_0.xml
   1. Select the host.
      Only valid sitemap XML files can be used as sitemap files.
   2. Click Download to download all custom sitemap files.
      Only the files from the last run are available.
   3. Click Upload to upload one or more custom sitemap files.
      Select XML text or all files.
   4. Click the download icon beside a custom sitemap file to download it.
4. Click the Settings tab, and configure sitemaps based on asset type: products, categories, content, folder, pipelines, product images, and custom sitemaps.
   1. In the Includes and Updates section, specify what asset types are included in the sitemap.
      • Sitemap Included: Select if you want the asset type to be included in a joint sitemap file.
      • Separated Sitemap File: Select if you want a separate xml file created for this asset type.
      • Change Frequency: Select always (default), or from hourly to never. This indicates to search engines how frequently the page might change, and not how often the search engine crawls the page.
      • Priority: Select the priority used by search engines to determine which pages to crawl first. One (1) has the highest priority.
   2. In the Configuration section, specify:
      • Links per sitemap file: enter the number of allowed links per sitemap (0 to 50,000). When a file, such as sitemap_1.xml, reaches this number of links, an additional file is created, such as sitemap_2.xml. If your site has 25,000 links and you set this to 5,000, five sitemap files are produced. If you set it to 25,000, only one file is produced.
      • Image View Type: Select the view type of the images to be included. Each catalog has its own view types. View types are configured on the Image Settings tab at site > Merchant Tools > Products and Catalogs > Catalogs > catalog . Including the view type adds the image location, title, and alternative text for the image to the sitemap.
      • Include Products: Specify if you want to include available products only, available and orderable products only, or all products. You can also choose to include or exclude non-searchable products. By default, products must be online, available, and searchable to be included in a sitemap. Extra not-available or non-searchable products can be included by merchants.
   3. In the Alternate URLs section:
      • Include alternate URLs (hreflang): Select if you want to include locale-based URLs. Enter the ISO code for the default locale.
      • Include alternate mobile URLs: Select if you want to include URLs for mobile devices. Enter the mobile screen width, for example, 640.
   4. In the Included Locales section, you can select the locales for which URLs are created in Business Manager.
      All active site locales are listed.
5. Click the Hostnames tab.
   A list of all valid host names, read from the URL rules module and alias file, appears on this page. You can enter the mobile version of the host name. This is the default hostname used for the URL generation in the sitemap.

   Note: The Host and the Mobile Host cannot use the same mappings.
   If you don't specify a hostname, Google returns a 404 error when you submit your sitemap. If you have not specified a host domain, an IP address is included in URLs to the sitemaps in your sitemap_index.xml file.

   If no hosts are available on this page, you must configure them in the hostname alias file.

6. Click the Job tab.

   The log file that is created contains information about the sitemap, such as number of products, images, categories, folders, and content assets that were assigned, skipped, and added. It also contains detailed information about errors that occurred during sitemap creation, enabling you to better diagnose problems.

   All date and time inputs are in the site's time zone Coordinated Universal Time.

   1. Click Run Now to run the job immediately.
      We recommend this approach for sites with infrequent updates or for updates after major site changes where many page URLs have changed. After you run the job, view the progress of the job in the Logs section.
      Sitemaps appear in the Logs section. Click Refresh to refresh the page.
   2. View errors in the logs section.
      In this section, you can see the name of the product, category, content, pipeline, or folder that caused an error. The exception to any error is logged to the error log. The sitemap creation job is marked as Error.
   3. Schedule automatic sitemap generation by enabling and configuring the scheduler.
      Salesforce recommends this approach for sites with daily or more frequent updates to their pages.
   4. In the Schedule section, configure the start date for the sitemap generation job (date and time); the frequency (minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years), and the days.
      Salesforce recommends that you schedule this job for low traffic times, such as the early morning, to avoid unnecessary CPU demands and memory consumption.
   5. Click Apply to save your changes to the schedule.