Image XML Sitemap Generator
FreeCreate an XML sitemap with image extensions for Google Image Search. Add image URLs, captions, and license info to help Google index your images.
What's next
Settings guide
Required image fields:
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<image:loc>— The absolute URL of the image. Must be HTTPS and accessible to Googlebot.
Optional but valuable fields:
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<image:caption>— Descriptive caption text. Google uses this to understand image content for Image Search queries. - ·
<image:title>— The image title, similar to alt text. Use keyword-rich descriptive text. - ·
<image:geo_location>— For location-specific images (e.g., "Austin, Texas, USA"). - ·
<image:license>— URL to the license page if images are licensed (e.g., Creative Commons). Required for Google's image rights metadata.
Image URL rules:
Must be absolute HTTPS URLs. Google supports JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP, SVG, and WebP. Avoid dynamically generated URLs with session parameters as they may not be consistent.
Limits:
Up to 1,000 images per page URL in the sitemap. For image-heavy sites (photography, stock), use a sitemap index with multiple sitemap files.
Format comparison
Image sitemap vs standard sitemap:
A standard sitemap lists pages for Google Search. An image sitemap is an extension of a standard sitemap — it still lists pages but adds image metadata for Google Image Search. They are not separate files; image extensions are added to your existing sitemap entries.
Image sitemap vs alt text:
Alt text in HTML directly describes the image to crawlers and assistive technology. An image sitemap provides additional structured metadata (caption, license, geo) that alt text cannot express. Both are needed for comprehensive image SEO — alt text for on-page signals, image sitemap for Google Image Search discovery.
How it works
Add page URLs
Enter your page URLs that contain the images you want Google to index.
Add image URLs per page
For each page, add the absolute URLs of the images on that page with captions and titles.
Set optional metadata
Add geographic location and license URL for images that require this attribution information.
Download and submit
Download the image sitemap XML and submit it in Google Search Console alongside your standard sitemap.
About this format
Standard XML sitemaps list page URLs. Image sitemaps extend each URL entry with the `<image:image>` namespace, telling Google specifically which images are on each page and providing metadata — captions, titles, geographic location, and license information — that helps Google Image Search index and rank your images accurately.
Without image sitemap extensions, Google discovers images by crawling your pages and parsing `<img>` tags and CSS background properties. This works for images embedded in HTML, but it misses images loaded dynamically via JavaScript, images in galleries that require user interaction to reveal, and images that have not yet been linked to by any indexed page. An image sitemap closes these gaps.
This tool generates sitemap XML with proper `<image:>` extensions using the Google image sitemap namespace (`xmlns:image`). Add your page URLs alongside the image URLs, captions, and optional license metadata. The output is a valid sitemap ready to submit to Google Search Console alongside your standard sitemap.