I use WordPress in almost all my sites. In fact, in some sites, I have more than 3 WordPress installed in different directories of the same domain.
Number of URLs in one of my site’s sitemap reached a figure over 2000: that was when I started to think about the maximum number of links in sitemaps or the maximum sitemap file size that is supported by Google.
I went to few forums where I usually participate: I searched for an answer and also did a simple search in Google. In the search results, I found the question asked by someone in the Google Forums.
The best thing about Google forums is that: we get to see answers by Google Employees, quite often. These are the people who actually work for Google and their answers are accurate as they work for the big G.
One of the people who I see a lot at Google Forums is JohnMu. He is always there to help webmasters in their hard times. His answers are simple yet accurate.
Luckily, I found an answer from JohnMu at Google Forums regarding this issue. This answer was given/posted on 24 March, 08. Google make changes all the time, so it is possible that the values given in the answer by JohnMu may also change in the future.
Anyway, here are the details:
Maximum number of URLs supported by Google [it is a Standard size of all search engines] in a single sitemap = 50,000
Maximum size of sitemaps supported by Google = 10 MB [this is the uncompressed file size]
Above are the two limitations that we should watch for. That is: if your sitemap reaches a total URLs of 50,000 and still have a file size less than 10MB: or in case your sitemap file size has reached 10MB but URLs are less than 50,000: in both of these cases, the one or the other limit has reached and that is when we need to stop adding more URLs in our sitemaps.
If your site has more than 50,000 URLs or if our sitemap has reached 10MB limit: then you can submit a sitemap index file that will list multiple sitemaps in your site: each listed sitemap cannot cross the limits which are mentioned above.
