AI Communication Standards Glossary

AI Sitemap

A structured JSON file that gives AI systems a typed, organized index of a website's content ... more detailed and machine-useful than a standard sitemap.xml.

Also known as: ai-sitemap.json, structured content index

An AI sitemap is a JSON-formatted content index designed for AI retrieval systems rather than traditional search crawlers. Where sitemap.xml is a flat list of URLs, an AI sitemap organizes content by type (articles, glossary terms, directory listings), includes topic labels, descriptions, entity maps, and content summaries. It gives AI systems a structured overview of what a site contains before they need to crawl individual pages. Typically placed at /ai/ai-sitemap.json.

Read the full article →

Related Terms

  • llm.json — A structured JSON file that provides machine-parseable identity and metadata about a website, designed for AI systems, data pipelines, and retrieval tools.
  • Structured Data — Information organized in a consistent, machine-readable format that AI systems can parse reliably without inferring meaning from visual layout or prose.