Squarespace Sitemap Guide

Squarespace generates an XML sitemap for every site automatically. You do not need to install a plugin, write any code, or configure anything. The sitemap exists, it updates when you publish or remove content, and it works. For context on what sitemaps are and why they matter, see our XML sitemap guide.

But that automatic generation comes with trade-offs. You have very little control over what goes into the sitemap, and there are specific limitations worth understanding. This guide covers everything you need to know about Squarespace sitemaps.

Where to Find Your Squarespace Sitemap

Your sitemap is always at the same location:

https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml

Replace yourdomain.com with your actual domain. If you are still using the built-in Squarespace subdomain (like yoursite.squarespace.com), the sitemap is there too, just at that subdomain.

Open that URL in your browser and you will see the XML sitemap. It is a sitemap index, meaning it references multiple child sitemaps that each contain a subset of your URLs.

Squarespace typically splits the sitemap into separate files for different content types:

Pages
Blog posts
Products (if you have a store)
Events
Gallery images

Each child sitemap is linked from the main sitemap index at /sitemap.xml.

What Squarespace Includes in the Sitemap

Squarespace adds the following to your sitemap automatically:

Regular pages. Every page you create in the Pages panel is included. This covers standard pages, cover pages, and layout pages.

Blog posts. Published blog posts are included. Draft and scheduled posts are not.

Product pages. If you are running a Squarespace Commerce store, individual product pages are included.

Events. Published events from the Events page type are included.

Gallery images. Individual image URLs from gallery pages may be included, depending on your gallery settings.

The homepage. Always included.

Each entry in the sitemap includes the URL and a lastmod timestamp that reflects when the page was last edited in the Squarespace editor.

What Squarespace Excludes

This is where the limitations start to show.

Password-protected pages. Any page behind a site-wide or page-level password is excluded from the sitemap. This is correct behavior -- you do not want password-protected content in search results.

Disabled pages. Pages you have toggled off in the navigation are still included in the sitemap, as long as they are not set to "disabled" in page settings. There is a difference between hiding a page from navigation and disabling it entirely.

Draft content. Unpublished blog posts, products, and events are excluded. Again, this is correct.

Index page sub-pages on their own. If you use an Index page (a page that stacks other pages together), the individual sub-pages may not have their own URLs in the sitemap. They exist only as sections within the parent Index page.

Custom URLs or external links. Links you add to navigation that point to external URLs or anchors on other pages are not included. The sitemap only lists actual pages hosted on your Squarespace site.

Files. PDFs, images uploaded to the file manager (not attached to a page), and other documents are not included in the sitemap.

Limitations You Should Know About

You cannot edit the sitemap directly

There is no way to manually add or remove URLs from the Squarespace sitemap. It is generated entirely from your site's content structure. If a page exists and is published, it is in the sitemap. If you do not want a URL in the sitemap, your only option is to delete the page, disable it, or password-protect it.

You cannot exclude specific pages

Other platforms like WordPress (with plugins like Yoast) let you toggle individual pages out of the sitemap. Squarespace does not offer this. If you have a page you want live but not in the sitemap (like a landing page you only share via direct link), there is no built-in way to exclude it.

No control over priority or changefreq

Squarespace does not include priority or changefreq tags in its sitemap. This is actually fine -- Google has publicly stated that it ignores both of these tags. But if you are comparing Squarespace to other platforms that include them, know that the absence does not matter.

No image sitemap or video sitemap

Squarespace does not generate dedicated image sitemaps or video sitemaps. The images within your pages are not listed with the <image:image> extension that Google supports. This is not a dealbreaker -- Google can discover images by crawling your pages -- but dedicated image sitemaps can help with Google Images indexing.

No hreflang in the sitemap

If you run a multilingual Squarespace site (using Weglot, manually duplicated pages, or folder-based translations), the sitemap does not include hreflang annotations. You will need to add hreflang tags directly in the page <head> using code injection if you need them.

How to Submit Your Squarespace Sitemap to Google

Squarespace sites are typically crawled by Google without any manual submission. But submitting your sitemap through Google Search Console gives you visibility into how Google is processing it and helps Google discover your pages faster. For a detailed walkthrough, see our guide to submitting a sitemap to Google.

Step 1: Verify your site in Google Search Console

Go to Google Search Console and add your property. You can verify using the domain method (DNS verification) or the URL prefix method. For Squarespace, the easiest approach is URL prefix verification with the HTML tag method:

Choose "URL prefix" and enter https://yourdomain.com
Select the "HTML tag" verification method
Copy the meta tag
In Squarespace, go to Settings > Advanced > Code Injection
Paste the meta tag in the Header section
Save and verify in Search Console

Step 2: Submit the sitemap

Once verified:

In Search Console, go to Sitemaps (in the left sidebar under Indexing)
Enter sitemap.xml in the "Add a new sitemap" field
Click Submit

Google will fetch the sitemap and begin processing it. You can check back later to see the status, the number of discovered URLs, and any errors.

Step 3: Monitor for issues

Check the Sitemaps report periodically. Look for:

Errors: Problems fetching the sitemap
Discovered URLs: The number of URLs Google found in the sitemap
Indexed URLs: How many of those URLs actually made it into the index

If the discovered count is much higher than the indexed count, some of your pages may have quality issues or be considered duplicates by Google.

Troubleshooting Common Squarespace Sitemap Issues

Sitemap returns a 404

If /sitemap.xml returns a 404, check these things:

Make sure you are using your live domain, not the Squarespace subdomain (unless that is your primary domain)
Check that your site is published and not in maintenance mode
If you recently connected a custom domain, allow a few hours for DNS to propagate

Pages missing from the sitemap

If a specific page is not showing up:

Check that the page is published (not a draft)
Check that the page is not password-protected
Check that the page is not disabled in page settings
If it is an Index sub-page, it may not have its own URL

Sitemap shows old URLs after a redesign

Squarespace updates the sitemap as you make changes, but if you deleted pages and recreated them at different URLs, the old URLs may linger briefly. Give it time -- the sitemap regenerates on its own schedule.

If you changed your URL slugs, the sitemap will reflect the new slugs. But Google may still have the old URLs cached. Set up URL redirects in Squarespace (Settings > Advanced > URL Mappings) to redirect old URLs to new ones.

Google reports "URL is not on Google" despite being in the sitemap

Being in the sitemap does not guarantee indexing. Google evaluates each URL independently. If a page is thin on content, duplicates another page, or has technical issues, Google may choose not to index it. Check the URL Inspection tool in Search Console for the specific reason.

Workarounds for Squarespace Sitemap Limitations

If Squarespace's built-in sitemap does not meet your needs, here are a few approaches:

Use an external sitemap generator

You can generate a sitemap externally and host it elsewhere. For example, generate a sitemap using an online tool, upload it to a cloud storage service, and reference it in your robots.txt. This is more complex than most Squarespace users need, but it is an option if you need full control.

Add pages to robots.txt instead

If your goal is to keep certain pages out of search engines rather than out of the sitemap specifically, you can use robots.txt. In Squarespace, you can add custom robots.txt rules via Settings > SEO > Search Engine Robots. Add Disallow rules for pages you do not want crawled.

Keep in mind that robots.txt prevents crawling, not indexing. If other sites link to a page, Google may still index the URL even if it cannot crawl the content. For true exclusion, add a noindex meta tag via Code Injection on that page.

Use code injection for hreflang

If you need hreflang tags for multilingual content, add them via Squarespace's Code Injection feature. Go to the specific page, open Settings > Advanced > Page Header Code Injection, and add the appropriate <link rel="alternate" hreflang="..."> tags.

Finding Any Website's Sitemap

If you are looking for the sitemap of any website (not just Squarespace), there are several reliable methods. We cover them all in our guide on how to find the sitemap of a website.

Squarespace sitemaps update automatically

You do not need to manually regenerate or resubmit your sitemap after publishing new content. Squarespace updates it on its own, and Google will re-fetch it periodically. Resubmitting in Search Console is only needed if you want to force a re-fetch.

Summary

Squarespace handles sitemaps for you, which is a genuine convenience. The sitemap is always at /sitemap.xml, it includes all your published content, and it updates automatically. The trade-off is that you cannot customize it. You cannot exclude specific pages, add image sitemaps, include hreflang annotations, or control any of the optional XML tags.

For most Squarespace sites, the built-in sitemap is perfectly adequate. Submit it to Google Search Console, make sure your important pages are published and accessible, and focus your energy on the content itself. If you run into errors or unexpected behavior, see our sitemap errors and fixes guide for detailed troubleshooting steps.

References

Check your Squarespace sitemap for issues

Validate your sitemap, find missing pages, and spot errors before Google does.

Try Instant Sitemap