Sitemap Priority and Changefreq: Why Google Mostly Ignores Them — and What's Worth Getting Right Instead

XML sitemaps have a <priority> field and a <changefreq> field that look like they'd meaningfully influence crawling — and Google has stated, fairly directly, that it largely ignores both

The XML Sitemap protocol specification includes, for each URL entry, optional <priority> (a value from 0.0 to 1.0, intended to indicate relative importance among a site's own URLs) and <changefreq> (intended to indicate how often a page's content changes — always, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, never) fields. Many sitemap-generation tools/plugins populate these fields by default — and many site owners spend time "optimizing" these values, under the assumption that doing so meaningfully influences crawl prioritization. Google's current, stated position is that both fields are largely ignored.

What the specification says these fields are for

<priority>:

<url>
  <loc>https://example.com/important-page</loc>
  <priority>0.9</priority>
</url>
<url>
  <loc>https://example.com/less-important-page</loc>
  <priority>0.3</priority>
</url>

Intended to indicate, on a 0.0-1.0 scale, the relative priority of this URL compared to other URLs on the same site (the spec explicitly notes this is relative, not a comparison across different sites' sitemaps — a 0.9 on your site doesn't mean "more important than a 0.9 on someone else's site").

<changefreq>:

<url>
  <loc>https://example.com/news/latest</loc>
  <changefreq>daily</changefreq>
</url>
<url>
  <loc>https://example.com/about-us</loc>
  <changefreq>yearly</changefreq>
</url>

Intended to hint at how often a page's content changes, potentially informing how often a crawler should re-check the page.

Why Google de-emphasizes these (the stated reasoning)

Google's own algorithms determine crawl frequency based on observed patterns — if a page's content actually changes frequently (Google observes this through repeated crawling over time), Google's systems can (and do) adjust crawl frequency for that page accordingly — *a <changefreq>daily</changefreq> annotation on a page that, in Google's actual observation, hasn't changed in months, doesn't override what Google has observed; conversely, a page correctly marked <changefreq>yearly</changefreq> that Google observes changing frequently would (per Google's stated approach) be crawled based on the observed behavior, not the annotation.

The underlying logic: self-reported "how often does this change" / "how important is this" annotations are easy to set incorrectly (whether through misunderstanding, default values from sitemap-generation tools that populate every URL identically regardless of actual characteristics, or — historically — attempts to game crawling by marking everything as <priority>1.0</priority> and <changefreq>always</changefreq>, which, if taken at face value, would provide no actual differentiating information at all, since every URL claiming "maximum priority, always changing" conveys nothingabout relative importance) — *Google's algorithms, observing actual crawl/change patterns directly, are a more reliable signal than self-reported annotations that may not reflect reality.

What sitemaps are still useful for (the parts that do matter)

This doesn't mean sitemaps themselves are useless — the <loc> (URL) and <lastmod> (last-modified date) fields remain meaningfully used:

<loc> — URL discovery: the primary, fundamental purpose of a sitemap — telling search engines which URLs exist — particularly valuable for: new sites (helping search engines discover URLs faster than might occur purely through organic link-discovery), large sites (where some URLs might be several clicks deep in internal linking, and a sitemap provides a direct listing, independent of how deeply nested a URL is in site navigation), and sites with content not extensively interlinked (e.g., a large archive of older content that isn't prominently linked from current pages, but should still be discoverable).

<lastmod> — if accurate, a genuinely useful signal: <lastmod>, unlike <changefreq>/<priority>, can be meaningfully used by Google — if it's accurate — a <lastmod> date that genuinely reflects when a page's content was last meaningfully updated can help Google prioritize re-crawling of recently-updated pages.

The critical caveat for <lastmod>: it must be accurate and meaningful — <lastmod> values that are auto-generated to reflect the current date/time on every sitemap generation (regardless of whether the page's content actually changed) — a common implementation flaw, particularly in some automated/CMS-generated sitemaps that simply stamp "now" as <lastmod> for every URL, every time the sitemap is regenerated, regardless of whether that specific page was edited* — provides no useful information, and — per some discussion from Google on this topic — *<lastmod> values that don't correspond to genuine content changes may be disregarded/distrusted by Google's systems, similar in spirit to how <priority>/<changefreq> self-reported values that don't reflect reality lose their informational value.

The practical implication: **if your sitemap-generation process can accurately track genuine content-modification timestamps (e.g., your CMS's "last edited" timestamp, reflecting actual edits, not "time the sitemap was regenerated") — <lastmod> populated from this genuine data is worth including, and is the one of these "metadata" fields with the clearest case for being actually used. If your only available "lastmod" data is "when was the sitemap file generated" (not reflecting per-URL content changes) — including <lastmod> populated this way provides little/no value, and arguably risks contributing to Google's broader assessment that this sitemap's metadata isn't reliable (affecting, potentially, how much weight is given to even the genuinely-useful parts, if the overall sitemap's metadata patterns suggest unreliability).

Should you remove <priority>/<changefreq> from your sitemaps?

Given Google's stated de-emphasis: **there's generally no harm in either (a) continuing to include them (if your sitemap-generation tooling includes them by default, and removing them would require effort) — since they're simply ignored, not actively penalized — or (b) omitting them entirely (if using/configuring tooling that makes this straightforward) — since omitting optional fields that aren't used doesn't lose anything.

The more valuable use of effort/attention: ensuring <loc> entries are accurate, canonical URLs (not including non-canonical variants, redirected URLs, or URLs that return errors — covered in the previous sitemap-indexation article) and ensuring <lastmod>, if included, reflects genuine content-modification data — these are the areas where sitemap quality genuinely affects outcomes, compared to <priority>/<changefreq>, where effort invested in "optimizing" these values is, per Google's stated position, effort that doesn't translate into the intended effect.

How to use the XML Sitemap Generator on sadiqbd.com

1. Focus on <loc> accuracy: ensure every URL included is a canonical, indexable, 200-OK URL — this is where sitemap quality most directly matters
2. For <lastmod>: if your content-management process tracks genuine edit timestamps, include <lastmod> populated from this data — if not, consider omitting <lastmod> rather than populating it with generation-time timestamps that don't reflect actual content changes
3. <priority>/<changefreq>: include or omit based on whichever requires less effort for your specific generation process — neither choice is expected to meaningfully affect crawling/indexing outcomes, per Google's stated position

Frequently Asked Questions

Do other search engines (Bing, etc.) treat <priority>/<changefreq> differently from Google? Different search engines may, in principle, weight sitemap metadata differently — this article reflects Google's specifically-stated position, given Google's dominant market share in most contexts this site's audience would be concerned with. If targeting a specific other search engine where this matters significantly to your site's traffic, that engine's own documentation would be the relevant reference — though, in practice, the general principle ("observed behavior tends to be more reliable than self-reported annotations") is plausibly a reasonably common approach across major crawlers, even if not every engine has made as explicit a public statement about it as Google has.

If <priority>/<changefreq> don't matter, why do sitemap-generation tools/plugins still include them by default? Likely a combination of: the XML sitemap specification still defines these fields as valid, optional elements (so tools implementing the full spec naturally include support for them), historical inertia (these fields were, at various points, discussed as potentially more influential than current guidance suggests, and tooling built during/before that period may not have been updated to reflect current guidance), and simply "doesn't hurt to include them" from the tool-developer's perspective (since, per current guidance, they're ignored rather than penalized — there's no strong incentive for tool developers to specifically remove support for fields that are, at worst, neutral).

Is the XML Sitemap Generator free? Yes — completely free, no sign-up required.

Try the XML Sitemap Generator free at sadiqbd.com — generate accurate XML sitemaps with proper lastmod dates for any site.