sitemapsorgin

Sitemapsorgin is a proposed open standard and toolset for representing and exchanging website sitemap information. It aims to extend traditional XML sitemaps by incorporating graph-based relationships, multilingual metadata, and richer change-detection signals. The project envisions a decentralized ecosystem in which website operators, search engines, and third-party crawlers can share consistent sitemap data.

The design combines a lightweight serialization with a graph-structured model. Core concepts include a UrlNode representing a page, a UrlSet for grouping pages, and Edge objects that encode relationships such as canonical links, alternate language versions, or sitemap hierarchies. Metadata fields cover last-modified timestamps, priority hints, and change frequency, with support for multilingual labels and localization metadata.

Sitemapsorgin is not as widely adopted as the established XML Sitemap Protocol. It exists primarily within a community-maintained repository and documentation, with reference implementations in JavaScript and Python. Adoption has been limited to experimental projects, large organizations exploring crawl optimization, or academic studies on sitemap data quality.

Criticism centers on complexity and compatibility: crawlers expect standard XML sitemaps, and introducing graph-structural data can raise interoperability challenges. Proponents argue the richer model can improve indexing signals and validation tooling, particularly for sites with multi-region content and dynamic architectures.

Related topics include the XML Sitemap Protocol, sitemaps.org guidelines, JSON-LD, and RDF-based metadata for web resources.