BigCommerce Sitemap: Where It Is and How to Submit It
Where is my BigCommerce sitemap? On a standard (Stencil) store it is at https://yourdomain.com/xmlsitemap.php, not at /sitemap.xml. BigCommerce generates it automatically from your catalog and you can’t edit the file. Headless stores built on Catalyst serve it at /sitemap.xml instead.
Don’t confuse it with /sitemap.php: that is the storefront site map page for shoppers, not the XML file for search engines.
How the BigCommerce Sitemap Is Built
According to BigCommerce’s documentation, /xmlsitemap.php returns a sitemap index: a short file that points to separate sitemaps for each type of page, such as products, categories and web content pages. Each of those sitemaps holds up to 50,000 URLs, which is also the limit Google sets for a single sitemap file, and BigCommerce adds more pages when you go over it. You submit the index once and search engines follow it to the rest.
Because the sitemap comes straight from your catalog, you shape it through the catalog: products and categories you keep off the storefront shouldn’t be there, and the pages you want found need to be live and visible.
Headless Stores on Catalyst
If your storefront runs on Catalyst, BigCommerce’s Next.js-based storefront, you don’t have to build a sitemap yourself. BigCommerce’s developer docs describe a /sitemap.xml route in Catalyst that fetches the sitemap index from BigCommerce and serves it from your storefront. Requests for the old /xmlsitemap.php address are redirected to /sitemap.xml.
Two details from those docs are worth knowing. The page URLs inside the sitemaps use your storefront domain, but the index entries point to the channel’s permanent BigCommerce address (store-{hash}-{channel}.mybigcommerce.com). And the proxied sitemap covers content BigCommerce manages (products, categories, brands); pages from other systems need their own sitemap.
Submit It to Google and Bing
- In Google Search Console, open Sitemaps.
- Enter
xmlsitemap.php(orsitemap.xmlon Catalyst) and click Submit. - In Bing Webmaster Tools, submit the full URL under Sitemaps.
Then make sure your robots.txt points to it, because many tools only look for /sitemap.xml by default:
Sitemap: https://yourdomain.com/xmlsitemap.php
That line matters for our own sitemap finder too: it reads the Sitemap: lines in robots.txt and tries seven standard paths, and /xmlsitemap.php is not one of them. If your robots.txt doesn’t list the sitemap, a tool like ours will report that none was found.
Keep Filter and Sort URLs Under Control
Category filters and sort options create many URL variations, such as /shoes/?color=red&size=10. They aren’t meant to be in your sitemap, but crawlers still find them through links on category pages. Options:
- Block the parameters you know are duplicates in robots.txt, for example sort orders. Avoid a blanket
Disallow: /*?: some filtered pages, such as a brand within a category, can be worth ranking. - Use filtering that doesn’t create new URLs, such as fragment-based filters (
#color=red). Google generally ignores the part after#, so those don’t add crawlable URLs.
Search Console’s old URL Parameters tool no longer exists, so robots.txt and good linking are the main levers now.
lastmod Dates
The sitemap includes <lastmod> dates. Google says it uses them only when they are consistently accurate, and it ignores <priority> and <changefreq>. After a bulk import or price update, open the sitemap and spot-check that recently changed products show recent dates.
Common BigCommerce Sitemap Problems
Google Search Console says it couldn’t fetch the sitemap
Open /xmlsitemap.php in a browser. If it loads for you but Google can’t fetch it, check whether a firewall or bot-protection rule is blocking Googlebot. If the store isn’t launched yet, crawlers can’t reach it at all. See why a sitemap stops working for the full list of causes.
A product is missing
Check that the product is visible on the storefront and belongs to a visible category. The sitemap follows what the storefront shows.
The wrong domain appears
Make sure your production domain, not the mybigcommerce.com address, is set as the store’s primary domain, and submit the sitemap under that domain in Search Console. On Catalyst, the index entries pointing to mybigcommerce.com are expected, as described above.
Check the Result
Open /xmlsitemap.php, then one of the sitemaps it lists, and spot-check a few product URLs. For an outside check, the free sitemap finder reads your robots.txt, loads the sitemap it points to, and tests 30 of its URLs for 404s, redirects, noindex tags and canonical problems.