We’re running a website (Content Hub Professional plan) with a large number
of service pages built using HubDB dynamic pages
Our current sitemap.xml is approaching/has crossed the 50,000 URL limit
defined by the sitemaps.org protocol. This raises two concerns:
Does HubSpot currently support generating a sitemap index file
(sitemap_index.xml) that references multiple smaller sitemap files
(e.g., page-sitemap.xml, location-sitemap-1.xml, location-sitemap-2.xml),
similar to how WordPress SEO plugins like Rank Math or Yoast handle this?
If not natively supported, is there an officially recommended workaround
within HubSpot (HubL/serverless/HubDB) to split a large sitemap, without
relying on external hosting for the sitemap files?
I found an older community thread (from 2017) confirming this wasn’t
possible at the time and recommending a third-party tool. Wanted to check
if this has changed with recent platform updates, since this directly
affects SEO indexing for our HubDB-generated location pages.
Any guidance — official or from others who’ve solved this — would be
really helpful.
It’s still not possible to split the sitemap.xml into smaller pieces.
One thing has changed tho - Reverse Proxy was released.
Never done something like this, but you could try to use it to generate your own sitemap.xml structure and use a Reverse Proxy setup to “overwrite” the default one.
Moderator note: While this solution may not address the original poster’s specific situation, it could be helpful for other community members facing similar challenges.
Thanks for the detailed response, this is really helpful!
A few follow-up questions:
Is Reverse Proxy available on Content Hub Professional, or is it
restricted to Enterprise only? I’ve seen some documentation suggesting
it’s Enterprise-exclusive — want to confirm before exploring this route.
If we go the Reverse Proxy path to serve a custom sitemap_index.xml,
would this affect how HubSpot’s native /sitemap.xml (with our HubDB
dynamic pages) continues to function? Or would we need to fully replace
it?
Has anyone in the community actually implemented this specific use
case (splitting a large sitemap via Reverse Proxy) successfully? Would
love to see a real example if one exists.
As an alternative, if Reverse Proxy isn’t feasible for our plan, is
generating a custom sitemap externally and hosting it via subdomain/CDN
(referencing it separately in Google Search Console, since it can’t
live on the same root domain path) still the only workaround?
A CDN or distributed computing environment (e.g., Amazon CloudFront, Cloudflare Enterprise)
Internal IT resources to implement and maintain it
Regarding the sitemap impact, I can see this note in that same documentation saying that “if you proxy only a subpath of your site to HubSpot (e.g., /blog), your main sitemap.xml file won’t automatically include HubSpot pages. You’ll need to manually add them or configure your sitemap to pull from multiple sources.”. So for HubSpot’s native /sitemap.xml continues to function, you’d need to stitch sources together yourself.
This means if you use a reverse proxy to intercept /sitemap.xml and serve a custom sitemap index, HubSpot’s native sitemap would no longer be served at that path as I mentioned, you’d be fully replacing it. You’d need to ensure your custom sitemap index references HubSpot’s sub-sitemap (e.g., by fetching it from HubSpot’s origin).
For the Community examples: I’d love to hear from our Top Experts: Hi @Anton, @evaldas and @zach_threadint do you have any insights to share or successful examples to help @Mayuri_Shirude, please?
In regards to the Subdomain/CDN workaround, let’s see what our Top Experts say about this or if they have other alternatives that can help.
Thanks and looking forward to hearing from you all!
And thanks so much @Anton for your help!
Bérangère
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As for the Reverse Proxy availability - it was an Enterprise only feature since it got announced, but now it isn’t and you can use external Proxy providers like CloudFront and such to have a Reverse Proxy.
The default sitemap.xml would still being generated automatically, but if you’re overwriting it it should “stop working”.
Hey @Mayuri_Shirude, I wanted to get back to you on your point 4, regarding the workaround you mentioned.
Here is the additional information I got: hosting a custom sitemap on a separate subdomain and submitting it independently in Google Search Console is the primary workaround when reverse proxy isn’t available.
The main constraint is that a sitemap can only reference URLs on the same domain it’s served from, as @Anton mentioned.
If you can’t use reverse proxy at all (even at the subdomain level), your options would be:
Host the sitemap on a subdomain/CDN you control, register that subdomain as a separate GSC property, and submit the sitemap there. Google treats subdomains as separate entities, so URLs in the sitemap must match the subdomain property.
Move the content itself to a subdomain, which gives you full control over sitemaps, robots.txt, etc. , but this is a significant SEO migration (~1 month, 90-day redirect window).
And thanks so much @Anton, I appreciate your help in tagging extra Champions and all your suggestions/helpful information!
Bérangère
This post was created with the assistance of AI tools
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