What is an image sitemap?
An image sitemap tells search engines which images appear on each page of your site. It uses Google's image extension to the sitemap format: inside a normal <url> entry, you add one <image:image> block per image. It can be a separate file or, more commonly, extra tags inside your existing XML sitemap.
Most images are found without one, because Google reads <img> elements when it crawls a page. Image sitemaps help when images are hard to find that way: loaded by JavaScript, served from a CDN hostname, or part of galleries and sliders.
Format
Declare the image namespace on the <urlset>, then list images per page:
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"
xmlns:image="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-image/1.1">
<url>
<loc>https://example.com/pour-over-guide/</loc>
<image:image>
<image:loc>https://cdn.example.com/img/pour-over-setup.webp</image:loc>
</image:image>
<image:image>
<image:loc>https://cdn.example.com/img/bloom-stage.webp</image:loc>
</image:image>
</url>
</urlset>
<image:loc> is the only tag Google uses today. In 2022 Google deprecated <image:caption>, <image:title>, <image:geo_location>, and <image:license>. They do no harm but are ignored. Each <url> can list up to 1,000 images, and images may be on another domain, such as a CDN, as long as that host allows crawling.
What it does and does not do
An image sitemap helps with discovery. It does not tell Google what the image shows, and it does not guarantee indexing. Understanding comes from the page itself: alt text, the file name, captions, and the surrounding text. Ranking in Google Images depends on the page's quality and relevance, like any other result.
It also cannot rescue images that are blocked. If robots.txt disallows your image folder or CDN host, Google cannot fetch the files regardless of the sitemap.
Who benefits most
- Photographers, recipe sites, and stores, where image search sends real traffic.
- Sites whose images are loaded by JavaScript or lazy-loaded without a standard
<img src>. See lazy loading. - Galleries and product carousels where only the first image is in the initial HTML.
A text-first blog with a featured image per post gains little, though including images costs nothing either.
In WordPress
WordPress core's sitemap does not include images. Hydrogen SEO adds image entries to each URL in its sitemaps, controlled by the Include Images in Sitemap switch on the Sitemap screen, and developers can adjust the list per post with the hydrogen_seo_sitemap_post_images filter. See XML sitemaps. For the broader picture, including formats and file names, see image SEO.
Common questions
Do I need a separate image sitemap file?
No. Image tags can go inside your regular sitemap entries, which is what most SEO plugins do. A separate file works too if you list it in your sitemap index.
Are image captions and titles in the sitemap still used?
No. Google deprecated those tags in 2022 and only uses image:loc. Put captions and descriptive text on the page instead.
Will an image sitemap get my images ranked?
It helps them get found. Ranking depends on the hosting page, alt text, and how well the image matches the search.