Sitemap index vs single sitemap: when to split
At scale, one sitemap.xml stops being enough. Threshold SOP:
1. Under 50k URLs and under 50MB uncompressed → single sitemap is fine. Don't over-engineer.
2. Over 50k URLs → mandatory split (it's the hard limit) into a sitemap index.
3. Split by template type, not alphabetically. Owner-action: one child sitemap per page pattern (/compare/, /city/, /tool/).
— Reason: you can read indexed-vs-submitted per pattern in Search Console and isolate which template has an indexing problem.
4. Add lastmod and keep it honest. Gate: lastmod changes only when content changes. Lying inflates crawl waste and trains Google to ignore it.
5. Guardrail: cap dynamic sitemaps so a bad job can't emit 500k junk URLs overnight.
Rollback: regenerate sitemaps from DB is idempotent — safe to rerun.
Ship gate: don't publish until all boxes are checked.
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Sitemap index vs single sitemap: when to split
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