--- schema_version: "1" id: 88c3c8ef3338222eb41c460a4c6db6067ecf8c1e0ac1821083f9f8e8bbfcf60b title: Sitemaps in B2C Commerce collection: admin version: current locale: en-us portal_url: https://docs.salesforce.com/admin/current/en-us/cc/264-0-0/b2c_sitemap_overview.md canonical_url: https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=cc.b2c_sitemap_overview.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 source_site: help.salesforce.com content_type: documentation content_hash: c5132df504ef2ebc7a56d4593d147978bc3df0daa5ab34866facb74ffe427685 description: Sitemaps are XML files that provide search engines, such as Google and Yahoo with information about a website so crawler can index it more efficiently. Sitemaps contain a list of all the URLs available for indexing and can provide the search engine with additional information, such as when a page was last updated, frequency of updates, and the relevance of a page. Search engines use this information to construct links to your site and control the ranking of links within its search results. products: - Commerce - B2C Commerce release: "264" --- # Sitemaps in B2C Commerce Sitemaps are XML files that provide search engines, such as Google and Yahoo with information about a website so crawler can index it more efficiently. Sitemaps contain a list of all the URLs available for indexing and can provide the search engine with additional information, such as when a page was last updated, frequency of updates, and the relevance of a page. Search engines use this information to construct links to your site and control the ranking of links within its search results. The main advantages of using sitemaps are as follows: - Improved crawler coverage of your site: With sitemaps, expose dynamic content that's not referenced by the static content of the site and can't be found by the standard crawling process. - Improved search results: Sitemaps keep your content fresh in search indexes. To avoid out-of-date indexed content in search results, notify the search engine of the frequency of changes to any given page, so the search engine knows when it needs to reindex the page. - Improved understanding of your site: You can examine the reports made available by Google about the visibility of your pages, statistics on searches resulting in traffic to your site, and how the crawler indexes the different pages in the site. Google is an example of a search engine and SiteGenesis is an example of a site. Because Google has almost half the market share of all search engines, a concentrated effort to optimize the traffic driven from Google makes good business sense. However, because most search engines use the _sitemap.org_ protocol to define their sitemaps, the sitemaps that you generate for Google can also be registered and used with other search engines, such as Yahoo or MSN. See [Sitemap Topology](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=cc.b2c_sitemap_topology.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 "To include your site in its search results, Google uses a googlebot to crawl your site. Google knows what pages are new in your site using the sitemap you provide. When Google requests the sitemap, the SiteMap pipeline in your application serves the sitemap to Google, using the SendGoogleSiteMap pipelet."). ## Configuring Sitemaps in B2C Commerce B2C Commerce generates a sitemap that's compatible with the Sitemap Protocol 0.9 from [Sitemaps.Org](https://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html). This is the standard sitemap definition for Google. To use sitemaps on B2C Commerce: - Configure sitemap attributes in the respective data, either through a [feed](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=cc.b2c_creating_feeds_for_sitemap_attributes.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 "Populate sitemap attribute values through the catalog and content import feeds, which let you set values for sitemap attributes of products and content respectively. You can also use a custom import pipeline to create and populate the attributes.") or [manually](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=cc.b2c_setting_sitemap_attributes.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 "B2C Commerce generates a sitemap that is compatible with the Sitemap Protocol 0.9 from Sitemaps.Org. Import sitemap attributes through a feed or add them manually in Business Manager. This page describes how to set them manually in the sitemap functionality. If the new sitemap feature is enabled on your instance, you can configure sitemap in the Sitemaps module.") in Business Manager. - Generate sitemaps in Business Manager. See [Generating Sitemaps.](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=cc.b2c_generating_sitemaps.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 "Sitemaps are a standardized way to tell search engines about pages on your site that they can otherwise miss during their normal crawling process.") - Create an account with the search engine of choice and verify site ownership. See [Notifying Search Engines About Your Sitemap.](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=cc.b2c_notifying_search_engines_about_your_sitemap.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 "After successfully creating a sitemap for a storefront, submit the sitemap to main search engines manually. Register with the Google Sitemaps program and submit your sitemap. Use this program also to see some interesting statistics about your site, such as the most used keywords and any spidering problems.") ## Home Page Link in Sitemap The B2C Commerce storefront-generated map contains a link to the homepage of your store in this format: ``` http:///on/demandware/Sites--Site/default/Home-Show. ``` However, if you configure a domain alias for your site which resolves to your home page, using a rule similar to: ``` "www.mysite.com" : [ {"pipeline":"Home-Show"} ], ``` Then the generated sitemap contains a link similar to: ``` http://www.mysite.com/ ``` ![Note](https://sf-zdocs-cdn-prod.zoominsoftware.com/tdta-cc-b2c_merchandiser_administrator-264-0-0-production-enus/ea76f372-6cfa-42a6-8e7c-05c6df7abed8/images/icon_note.png) Note Configure sitemap settings individually for each instance type. You can't replicate sitemap site preferences between Staging and Production or Development. You must create the settings and job to generate the sitemap on each instance ## Multiple Sites If you have multiple sites, you may need multiple sitemaps. If your sites share the same product catalog, even if they have different locales, they do not need separate sitemaps. However, if your sites don't share the same product catalog, they need different sitemaps. Register and generate these sitemaps separately.