What is the difference between HTML sitemaps and XML sitemaps?

[arkubdubai]

What is the difference between HTML sitemaps and XML sitemaps?

[altssolution]

HTML site map is basically use for user point of view which shows the proper navigation structure of a site. Means a user visit your sitemap page he/she easily find your pages and sub pages very easily.
XML site map is used for the search engine point of view to help the crawl to crawler crawl your site. When crawler crawl a site, if your site have XML site map the crawler very easily crawl your all pages.

[jacks]

HTML sitemaps are designed for humans to navigate the website. XML Sitemaps on the other hand are designed for search engines to know the site structure.

[Akash_11]

The simplest explanation is that XML is primarily for the search engines while HTML is written for the users. A XML sitemap protocol is specifically intended for search engine spiders. At its root, XML is a file that includes all the behind the scenes activity on a web site.

[mystic98]

A XML sitemap protocol is specifically intended for search engine spiders. At its root, XML is a file that includes all the behind the scenes activity on a web site. Not just the site’s main URL, but all the URLs within the site along with the associated metadata. This can include when the URL was last updated, how important it is, the average frequency changes occur, the URLs relation to the rest of the site, etc.
HTML is just a general overview of the site, just the pages and info a user needs to be concerned with. If you’re on a web site and you’re looking for the shopping cart or the ‘Contact Us’ page and can’t find it, you’d go to the sitemap and easily find it there. While this is geared towards the user, it can also help your search engine ranking because your site is user-friendly and catering to the site visitor.

[damponting44]

An XML sitemap is a tool used by search engines to crawl your site.
An HTML sitemap is a map of your site displayed in a user-friendly format, a page with links that the user can use to navigate your website.

[dilipcybex]

HTMl sitemaps helps you navigate through a website. It is the visible map on a website. XML sitemaps are for the bots to crawl.

[Sumit_Kumar]

XML stands for the Xtensible Markup Language that is used for web mapping. And, the XML sitemap is used for the same purpose so the SE crawlers crawl webpages fast and index them fastly. HTML sitemap is for the better user experience.

[RH-Calvin]

HTML sitemap is a plain text sitemap used by browsers to know and surf through your website pages. XML sitemap is a coded sitemap used to submit in webmaster tool to help spiders crawl them and index the webpages in search engines.

[alexkevin]

HTML sitemap is for users
XML sitemap is for search engines

Simple

[friscowebsoft]

I really liked your query.

[kinjal]

There are 2 popular versions of a site map:
The XML Sitemap which is a techie version and does not need to be seen by you or me, but is meant for the search engine to read about the pages in a site, their relative importance to each other, and how often they are updated. You can also submit this version of the sitemap to Google Webmaster tools for quick indexing and slotting into Google memory.
The HTML Sitemap is more like the ones you see in shopping malls, telling you where the Zara store is, so you can hop over there directly and not have to walk two miles hunting for it. This type of sitemap is meant for us mere mortals, unlike the XML, which only the Google gods can view!

[aegisjurist]

Sitemaps are basically a page where all links of the particular website exists. sitemaps used to be written in two formats HTML and XML, Where HTML serves for users and XML serves for search engines spider bots.

[Juggal]

XML stands for the Xtensible Markup Language that is used for web mapping. And, the XML sitemap is used for the same purpose so the SE crawlers crawl webpages fast and index them fastly. HTML sitemap is for the better user experience.

I agree with Sumit_Kumar XML is the markup language that is used for web mapping and XML sitemap helps to crawl the web pages fast.