An XML sitemap is a file that lists all your website content in an XML format so that search engines like Google can easily discover and index your content.
Back in the early 2000s, government websites used to have a link on their main pages titled ‘Sitemap’. This page usually contained a list of all the pages on that website.
While some websites still have HTML sitemaps today, the overall usage of sitemaps has evolved over the years.
Today sitemaps are published in an XML format instead of HTML, and their target audience is search engines and not people.
Basically, an XML sitemap is a way for website owners to tell search engines about all the pages that exist on their website.