Misquoted Confidence: high
Primary source found, but the way it is quoted changes the subject, metric, population or precision.
Safe rephrasing
Google says it ignores the <priority> and <changefreq> sitemap tags; it uses <lastmod> only when that date is consistently accurate.
What the source says
Google ignores <priority> and <changefreq> values. Google uses the <lastmod> value if it's consistently and verifiably (for example by comparing to the last modification of the page) accurate.
Google Search Central — Build and submit a sitemap
- Commonly cited as
- "Set priority 1.0 on your key pages"
- True origin
- Google Search Central — Build and submit a sitemap
- Type
- Stat check: A widely repeated statistic traced back to its origin.
- Year
- Current documentation
- Data as of
- Documentation read on 2026-10-17
- Last checked
- Method & sample
- Official Google documentation (current version read Oct. 17, 2026).
- Drift between quote and source
- Type: tags defined by the sitemaps.org protocol presented as Google ranking/crawl signals
- Only an accurate <lastmod> is used
- Interest
- Google operates Google Search and documents its own systems.