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How to add an XML sitemap and robots.txt to Umbraco

Generate a dynamic sitemap.xml from your Umbraco content tree, add a robots.txt that points search engines at it, let editors exclude pages, and submit it to Google Search Console.

6 min read Umbraco 14 – 18 Updated 29 October 2026

Why you need both

  • sitemap.xml lists every page you want search engines to find, with when it last changed.
  • robots.txt tells crawlers what not to crawl, such as the /umbraco backoffice, and where your sitemap is.

The code below is a simplified version of what powers umbraco.ninja's own sitemap.xml and robots.txt.

Step 1: Let editors exclude pages

Add a True/false property called Hide from sitemap (alias hideFromSitemap) to your SEO composition. Thank-you pages, search results and test pages shouldn't appear.

Step 2: The controller

Controllers/SitemapController.cs
using System.Xml.Linq;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc;
using Umbraco.Cms.Core.Models.PublishedContent;
using Umbraco.Cms.Core.PublishedCache;
using Umbraco.Cms.Core.Routing;
using Umbraco.Cms.Core.Services.Navigation;
using Umbraco.Extensions;

namespace MySite.Controllers;

public class SitemapController(
    IDocumentNavigationQueryService navigation,
    IPublishedContentCache contentCache,
    IPublishedUrlProvider urlProvider) : Controller
{
    private static readonly XNamespace Ns = "http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9";

    [HttpGet("sitemap.xml")]
    [ResponseCache(Duration = 3600)]
    public IActionResult Sitemap()
    {
        navigation.TryGetRootKeys(out IEnumerable<Guid> rootKeys);
        IEnumerable<IPublishedContent> roots = rootKeys
            .Select(key => contentCache.GetById(key))
            .OfType<IPublishedContent>();

        var urls = roots
            .SelectMany(root => root.DescendantsOrSelf())
            .Where(page => page.TemplateId > 0 || page.IsVisible())
            .Where(page => page.Value<bool>("hideFromSitemap") == false)
            .Select(page => new XElement(Ns + "url",
                new XElement(Ns + "loc", urlProvider.GetUrl(page, UrlMode.Absolute)),
                new XElement(Ns + "lastmod", page.UpdateDate.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd"))));

        var document = new XDocument(new XDeclaration("1.0", "utf-8", null), new XElement(Ns + "urlset", urls));
        return Content(document.Declaration + "\n" + document.Root, "application/xml");
    }

    [HttpGet("robots.txt")]
    public IActionResult Robots()
    {
        string host = $"{Request.Scheme}://{Request.Host}";
        return Content($"User-agent: *\nDisallow: /umbraco/\n\nSitemap: {host}/sitemap.xml\n", "text/plain");
    }
}
  • In Umbraco 18, the top of the content tree comes from IDocumentNavigationQueryService.TryGetRootKeys. The old GetAtRoot() no longer exists on the content cache.
  • UrlMode.Absolute gives full URLs, which sitemaps require.

Step 3: Make sure the routes are mapped

Attribute-routed controllers need MapControllers(). Umbraco's endpoints already map them in most projects, but if /sitemap.xml returns 404, add this after UseUmbraco():

Program.cs
app.MapControllers();

Step 4: Check it and submit it

  1. Visit /sitemap.xml and /robots.txt on your site.
  2. In Google Search Console, open Sitemaps and submit https://example.com/sitemap.xml. Do the same in Bing Webmaster Tools.

Big sites

Sitemaps are limited to 50,000 URLs. Beyond that, split them into several sitemaps listed in a sitemap index, for example one per section or language.

Need a hand?

umbraco.ninja has more than 20 years of Umbraco experience. If you'd rather not do this yourself, we'll set it up, test it and hand it over.

Get a fixed-price quote