You can find the XML sitemap URL at the top of the XML Sitemap page in your store's Admin area:
X-Cart 5.4.x - Store Setup > SEO Settings > XML Sitemap
X-Cart 5.5.x - Settings > SEO > XML Sitemap
This URL specifies the location of your store's XML sitemap index. The index lists all available XML files for your store.
There can be more than one XML file due to restrictions on the size of individual XML files and the number of URLs in each.
If you check the XML file, there will be no sitemap data because the XML file does not have any associated style information. However, the content of the file is as follows:
<sitemapindex xmlns="">
<sitemap>
<loc></loc>
<lastmod>2021-01-26T19:26:08Z</lastmod>
</sitemap>
</sitemapindex>
A link to the site's sitemap is included in the child entry:
<loc></loc>
That is a common practice in Sitemap index files generally accepted by almost all search engines. See https://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html#index for more details.
Your store's generated XML sitemap will be re-generated automatically every 24 hours if you have correctly configured your server to run X-Cart's script for periodic tasks console.php periodically (for example, by cron). For more info on that, see Scheduled X-Cart Tasks.
Submitting XML Sitemap to Search Engines Manually
You can manually submit the XML sitemap URL directly to the chosen search engine via the interface it provides.
For example, if submitting to Google, this would be via the Search Console Sitemaps tool, as is recommended here.
Manual direct submission of an XML sitemap to a search engine is a reliable and strongly recommended method.
Note that we have a redirect configured in .htaccess that enables us to use the link shop.com/sitemap.xml instead of shop.com/cart.php?target=sitemap ("shop.com" should be replaced with the actual web address of your store). If using the direct manual submission method, you can use any of these links - provided that you are using Apache and clean URLs are working correctly for your store. If you are using a different type of web server, or clean URLs are not configured or not working for your store for some reason, please only use the XML sitemap URL provided at the top of the XML sitemap section (shop.com/cart.php?target=sitemap.
Submitting XML Sitemap to Search Engines via Robots.txt
If you look at the contents of robots.txt, you will find that it contains an example of how to add an XML sitemap URL (This example is commented out):
# Sitemap example
# Sitemap: http://example.com/sitemap.xml
To add your XML sitemap URL to robots.txt, you need to uncomment the line with the URL and replace the example URL with your actual XML sitemap URL from your store's XML sitemap section (Store Setup > XML Sitemap).
Submitting XML Sitemap to Search Engines via Automated Ping-Request
This method is currently integrated with Google and Bing only.
To use this method:
Open your store's XML Sitemap page;
Enable the checkbox(es) for the search engines to which you want to submit your XML sitemap (Google, Bing, or both);
Click the Submit button at the bottom of the page.
That sends get-requests to the following URLs:
For more info on sitemaps, see http://www.sitemaps.org.
Related pages: