Sitemap priority/changefreq vs lastmod — which actually does anything?

Sitemap priority/changefreq vs lastmod — which actually does anything?

'Q: Should I set priority and changefreq in my product sitemap, or just lastmod?'

Short answer: Skip priority and changefreq (Google ignores them); invest in an accurate lastmod — that one Google actually uses for crawl scheduling.

The longer version: Google confirmed it disregards the priority and changefreq tags — they're noise. But lastmod is a real crawl signal, if it's honest. An accurate lastmod tells Google which products changed (price, stock, copy) so it re-crawls those first instead of wasting budget on unchanged pages.

The catch: lying breaks it. If your CMS stamps today's date on every URL nightly, Google learns your lastmod is meaningless and ignores it. Stamp it only when the page content genuinely changes.

Example: 50,000-product sitemap — drop priority/changefreq entirely, and set lastmod to the true last-edit timestamp so a price change on 200 products gets those re-crawled fast.

Rule of thumb: Priority/changefreq = decoration. Honest lastmod = the only field worth your effort.

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