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Shopify generates and maintains sitemap.xml automatically at your domain root. You do not create it, and you cannot edit the file directly.

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What it contains

The root sitemap is an index pointing to sub-sitemaps:
  • sitemap_products_1.xml
  • sitemap_collections_1.xml
  • sitemap_pages_1.xml
  • sitemap_blogs_1.xml
Shopify updates these as you add, change, and remove content. It includes every product, collection, page and blog post that is published to the Online Store sales channel. A noindex tag added in theme code hides a page from search engines but does not remove it from the sitemap.

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Submit it

In Google Search Console, go to Sitemaps and submit sitemap.xml. Do the same in Bing Webmaster Tools. Submit once. Resubmitting repeatedly does not increase crawl rate and is not a fix for anything.

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Limits worth knowing

  • To exclude an individual URL, add the metafield seo.hidden (namespace seo, key hidden, type integer, value 1) to that product, collection, page or blog post. Shopify then removes it from the sitemap, hides it from search engines and hides it from your storefront search. Unpublishing it from the Online Store sales channel also removes it.
  • changefreq and priority values are not used by Google. Adjusting them achieves nothing.
  • Large catalogues are split automatically into several child sitemaps — sitemap_products_1.xml, sitemap_products_2.xml and so on — so no file comes near the 50,000-URL limit.
  • The sitemap is a discovery aid, not an indexing guarantee. Inclusion does not mean a page will be indexed.

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Troubleshooting

“Couldn’t fetch” in Search Console. Usually a password-protected store or a robots.txt rule blocking the sitemap. Confirm the store is publicly accessible and the sitemap loads in an incognito browser. Pages missing from the sitemap. Check the product or page is published to the Online Store sales channel and doesn’t have the seo.hidden metafield set. Submitted URLs not indexed. Normal to a degree, especially on large catalogues. Persistent large-scale exclusion usually indicates thin content or crawl budget problems rather than a sitemap fault. Sitemap contains URLs that redirect or 404. Shopify should remove these automatically; if they persist, the underlying resource is likely still published somewhere.

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Custom sitemap needs

Editing robots.txt.liquid in your theme lets you reference additional sitemaps — useful when content lives on a subdomain or a separate platform. If your documentation or blog is hosted separately, it has its own sitemap and must be submitted separately.