Sitemap Generator

  • Release version: Washingtondc
  • Updated February 1, 2024
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Sitemap Generator

    The ServiceNow® Sitemap Generator application allows users to define and automatically create XML sitemaps to enhance the search engine optimization (SEO) of public portal pages. This application can be activated from the ServiceNow instance or the ServiceNow Store.

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    Key Features

    • Activation: Admin users can activate the Sitemap Generator (snuxseositemap) to start generating sitemaps.
    • Sitemap Requirements: Generated sitemaps must adhere to specific criteria:
      • Includes only publicly accessible pages.
      • Excludes pages with 301 redirects and those marked with a NOINDEX meta tag.
      • Incorporates canonical URLs or hreflang tags when applicable.
      • Supports human-readable keywords in URLs using the getHumanReadableUrl methods.
    • Logging: Excluded URLs are listed in the Application Log table for tracking.

    Key Outcomes

    By utilizing the Sitemap Generator, ServiceNow customers can effectively create XML sitemaps that improve the visibility of their public portal pages in search engines, ultimately driving more traffic and enhancing user engagement on their platforms.

    Use the ServiceNow® Sitemap Generator application to define and automatically generate XML sitemaps to improve search engine optimization of public portal pages.

    Activation information

    You can activate the Sitemap Generator application (sn_ux_seo_sitemap) from your instance. For more information, see Activate Sitemap Generator.

    You can also activate Sitemap Generator from the ServiceNow Store. Visit the ServiceNow Store website to view all the available apps and for information about submitting requests to the store. For cumulative release notes information for all released apps, see the ServiceNow Store version history release notes.

    Sitemap requirements

    The sitemap is generated from a script or static XML. When creating a sitemap, you must ensure that its contents meet the following requirements because validating them isn’t handled automatically:

    • Includes only pages with unauthenticated user access.

      Sitemap Generator automatically excludes portal URLs that aren’t publicly accessible from sitemaps. However, this doesn’t apply for URLs with custom domains instead of the ServiceNow domain. URLs that are excluded from the sitemap are listed in the Application Log [syslog_app_scope] table.

    • Excludes pages that respond with a 301 redirect.
    • Excludes pages with the NOINDEX meta tag, such as retired or expired pages. If you use a script to create the sitemap, include logic similar to that of the SEO script include you used to add NOINDEX meta tags to pages to exclude those pages from the sitemap. For more information, see Configure custom SEO tags for canonical URLs and localized knowledge articles.
    • For any pages with canonical URLs or hreflang tags, the sitemap includes those canonical URLs or URLs with hreflang tags returned by the SEO script include for that page. If you use a script to create the sitemap, include logic similar to that of the SEO script include you used to return canonical URLs or URLs with hreflang tags. For more information, see SEO for canonical URLs and localized versions of knowledge articles.
    • For any pages with human readable keywords in URLS, the sitemap includes those URLs with human readable keywords. If you use a script to create the sitemap, use one of the getHumanReadableUrl methods in the SPSEOUtilsSNC class to return the human readable keywords and include them in the sitemap URLs. For more information, see Add human readable keywords to page URLs.
    Note:
    Guidance on how to meet these requirements is included in the code templates in the Script and Static XML fields where the sitemap contents are defined. For more information, see Generate XML sitemaps for SEO indexing.
    For more information about sitemap requirements for SEO, refer to the following resources: