Sitemaps recommend by google

[seoanalytics]

Google in it guideline recommends to create a sitemap.

Do they means a /sitemap.xml or does it need to be sitemap directly on the website ?

Does it make any difference ?

Thank you,

[CaseyKluver]

You can name the sitemap whatever you want, but yes it should be in .xml format and should be located on your server. Having your sitemap at domain.com/sitemap.xml is a best practice. You can also have it in a xml.gz file for larger sitemaps.

Once it is created submit it to Google Webmaster Tools.

[DeanAndrews]

I also include my sitemap in the robots.txt

ref: https://developers.google.com/webmasters/control-crawl-index/docs/robots_txt

sitemap: [absoluteURL]