Glossary
lastmod (sitemap)
Lastmod is an element in an XML sitemap that gives the date a page was last changed in a meaningful way, so search engines can decide when to crawl it again.
It sits next to the page's URL in the sitemap, as a date such as 2026-10-28. Google has said it uses the value only when it is consistently and verifiably accurate; a date that changes on every deploy, or is always today, teaches the crawler to ignore it.
It should change when the content of the page changes in a way a visitor would notice, not when the footer, a timestamp or a script changes. It does not make a page rank.
Lastmod, the software at lastmod.ai, is named after this element. It is software for SEO and AI visibility, not the element itself.
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