Image sitemap generator

Tell Google which images live on which page, including images loaded by JavaScript that a crawler might miss.

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How it works

Image entries are added inside the normal <url> element of the page that shows the image. You can put them in your main sitemap or in a separate file. Images may be hosted on a CDN or another domain, as long as that host lets Googlebot crawl them.

Google simplified the extension in 2022: only <image:loc> remains. The old <image:caption>, <image:title>, <image:geo_location> and <image:license> tags are deprecated and ignored, so this generator leaves them out.

The rules

Declare xmlns:image="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-image/1.1" on <urlset>.
Up to 1,000 <image:image> entries per <url>.
Image URLs must be crawlable: not blocked in robots.txt on the image host.
The page <loc> is the page that displays the image, not the image file itself.

Source: Google: Image sitemaps. Check the finished file with the sitemap validator; it recognises all four extensions.

Questions people ask

Do I need an image sitemap?

Only if Google might not find your images otherwise, for example images inserted by JavaScript, lazy-loaded galleries, or if image search traffic matters to you. Images in plain <img src> tags are found by normal crawling.

Can image URLs be on a CDN?

Yes. Image URLs can be on any domain. The CDN host must allow Googlebot in its own robots.txt.

Should I still add image:caption and image:title?

No. Google deprecated them in 2022 and ignores them. Put descriptive text in the alt attribute and surrounding copy instead.