Google sitemap submission supports multiple sitemap submission. Multiple sitemap submission is really useful for those webmasters and website owners who have multiple websites and want to submit all sitemaps to Google, but submitting sitemaps of each individual website is not an easy job so Google sitemap submission offers a simple way to submit more then one website by using only one sitemap index.
The XML format of a Sitemap index file is very similar to the XML format of a Sitemap file. The Sitemap index file uses the following XML tags:<sitemapindex> – the parent tag surrounds the file.
<sitemap> – the parent tag for each Sitemap listed in the file (a child of <sitemapindex>)
<loc> – the location of the sitemap (a child of <sitemap>)
<lastmod> – the last modified date of the sitemap (optional)
Sample XML Sitemap Index
The following example shows a Sitemap index in XML format. The Sitemap index lists two Sitemaps:
<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<sitemapindex xmlns=”http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9“>
<sitemap>
<loc>http://www.example.com/sitemap1.xml.gz</loc>
<lastmod>2004-10-01T18:23:17+00:00</lastmod>
</sitemap>
<sitemap>
<loc>http://www.example.com/sitemap2.xml.gz</loc>
<lastmod>2005-01-01</lastmod>
</sitemap>
</sitemapindex>
