Google says having a regularly up to date sitemap is perhaps a good suggestion

Google’s John Mueller told a webmaster that for his particular example, it might be a good idea to have a separate sitemap XML file for URLs that are “updated often”. John said, “Putting the newer URLs into a single” often updated “sitemap file is probably a good idea here.”

That came up Twitter where he was asked for “a sitemap with over 250,000 pages (multilingual pages), divided into 18 XML files”. “The XMLs are all updated frequently and contain high priority pages, but Google doesn’t read them that often,” he added. Then he asked, “Should I create fewer files? Or merge all the important pages?”

John said, “Putting the newer URLs into a single” often updated “sitemap file is probably a good idea here.” But John added, “However, if all 250,000 pages are updated regularly it will always be a challenge.”

So, wondering if you have certain pages that are updated frequently, should you have a sitemap XML file for them? Do one of you guys do that? Not me.

Here are these tweets:

Putting the newer URLs into a single “often updated” sitemap file is probably a good idea here. However, when all 250,000 pages are regularly updated, it will always be a challenge.

– 🧀 John 🧀 (@JohnMu) October 27, 2021

Forum discussion at Twitter.