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§ 2.7.5 ARTICLE
Published VerifiedEvery 6 weeks Sources4 named Authored bySquareRank Team

E-commerce SEO · Sitemap · § 2.7.5

The Squarespace Commerce Sitemap

Squarespace auto-generates an XML sitemap at /sitemap.xml1 that includes visible products, visible category pages, and standard site pages — and excludes archived products, unavailable products, and noindex pages. The submission flow is the same as any site: submit /sitemap.xml once in Search Console, then use the Index Coverage report to spot products that are not being indexed. The discontinued-product question is the part that catches owners: deleting a product produces a 404; archiving keeps the URL alive but removes it from the sitemap; the right move is usually a 301 redirect via URL Mappings.

This page covers what is included in the sitemap, the archive-versus-delete decision, and the Search Console submission flow.

What Squarespace includes in /sitemap.xml

Squarespace auto-generates a sitemap at /sitemap.xml that lists visible products, visible category pages, the standard site pages (home, about, contact, etc.), and any blog posts and pages with a unique URL. Archived products, products marked unavailable, and any page with the noindex toggle on are excluded automatically. The sitemap updates on a near-realtime cadence: a new product published at 2pm appears in the sitemap within minutes. The URL is fixed — /sitemap.xml — and the owner cannot edit it manually.

The auto-generated sitemap is good enough for most Squarespace Commerce stores under a thousand products. Above a thousand products, the sitemap can run into Google's per-sitemap URL limit (50,000 URLs per sitemap file), but Squarespace handles this by splitting into multiple sitemap files automatically. The /sitemap.xml URL becomes a sitemap index pointing at child sitemaps.

What the sitemap carries

Visible

Squarespace's inclusion rule — only currently-visible products and pages appear in the sitemap.

Squarespace Help · 2026-Q1
Excluded

archived products, unavailable products, and noindex pages — all removed from the sitemap automatically.

Squarespace Help · 2026-Q1
50,000

URLs per sitemap file — Google's limit. Squarespace splits into multiple files automatically when needed.

Google Search Central · 2026-Q1

Archiving vs deleting products — what happens to the URL

Archiving a product on Squarespace Commerce hides it from the storefront and removes it from the sitemap, but the URL remains alive and returns a 200 with the archived product page (typically showing 'unavailable' status). Deleting a product removes the URL entirely and the next request returns a 404. The 2026 best practice for discontinued products is neither — it is to set up a 301 redirect via URL Mappings pointing the old product URL to the most relevant current product or category, preserving the link equity that has accumulated to the URL over time.

The redirect pattern is the move that protects rank. A product URL that has been live for two years often carries backlinks from blogs, social media shares, email newsletter archives, and Google's index — collectively the link equity that helped it rank. Deleting the URL throws away that equity entirely (404s eventually drop from Google's index and the equity disappears); archiving keeps the URL alive but produces a 'product unavailable' page that frustrates returning visitors; redirecting transfers the equity to a relevant successor.

Submitting and monitoring in Google Search Console

Submit /sitemap.xml once in Google Search Console after launch (Sitemaps section of the property). The first submission tells Google the sitemap exists; subsequent updates are auto-discovered when Google recrawls. Use the Index Coverage report to monitor which submitted URLs are being indexed and which are excluded. The most common 2026 exclusion reasons on Squarespace Commerce sites are 'discovered but not indexed' (Google found the URL but has not chosen to index it yet, usually due to crawl budget) and 'crawled but not indexed' (Google reads the page but decides it is too thin to include).

Both exclusion reasons are addressable. 'Discovered but not indexed' usually resolves with time on smaller stores; on larger stores it indicates a crawl-budget issue that internal linking can help (link the page from more places on the site so Google encounters it sooner). 'Crawled but not indexed' is the helpful-content signal — the product page is too thin (typically because the description is short, the image is missing, or the schema is incomplete), and the fix is editorial.

Keep reading · § 2.7.5