Guides › Sitemaps
lastmod, priority and changefreq: what Google actually uses
- <lastmod>: used by Google and Bing as a recrawl hint, if it's consistently accurate. Set it to the date the main content last changed, not the date the sitemap was generated. Sites that set every lastmod to "now" teach Google to ignore it.
- <priority>: ignored by Google.
- <changefreq>: ignored by Google.
Valid lastmod formats (W3C Datetime)
2026-10-19 2026-10-19T14:30+00:00 2026-10-19T14:30:00Z 2026-10-19T14:30:00.000-04:00
Invalid: 19/10/2026, 2026/10/19, Oct 19 2026, and timestamps without a timezone such as 2026-10-19T14:30:00. The checker counts invalid lastmod values in your sitemap.
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