According to John Mueller, Google ignores the priority attribute in XML sitemaps , but does pay attention to lastmod. Google may prioritize your pages themselves based on popularity and authority, but Lastmod is a tag that indicates when the URL last changed, which is very interesting to Google. Also, according to John Mueller, you don’t need to add an XML sitemap for AMP URLs.
At Atlassian, we solved the lack of XLM sitemap functionality in our CMS with a 3rd party XML sitemap provider, and it works pretty well.
<img alt="3rd party xml sitemap provider example" class="zooming lazyloaded" data-src="s:static.semrushomcdn-cgiimagewidth=1010bloguploadsmedia1e651e65cf6a52fc11c5d3d0301dc83c28a4image.png" data-gtm-vis-has-fired-9025619_57="1" src="s:static.semrushomcdn-cgiimagewidth=1010bloguploadsmedia1e651e65cf6…image.png">
It works even if the format is text-based instead of XML.
The New York Times references its sitemap in robotsxt and namibia mobile database separates out formats like video or news. It even goes a step further and has sitemaps for specific categories, like cooking or elections.
As a publisher, it makes sense to use a dedicated XML sitemap for timely events because you need to know how fast Google is fetching your content and whether it can index all of it without any problems.
<img alt="Events in sitemap" class="zooming lazyloaded" data-src="s:static.semrushomcdn-cgiimagewidth=1010bloguploadsmediaafc5afc5dbb81921bdaf61e73129e5a9cdcfimage.png" data-gtm-vis-has-fired-9025619_57="1" src="s:static.semrushomcdn-cgiimagewidth=1010bloguploadsmediaafc5afc5dbb…image.png">
Walmart has similar categories, which makes sense for an e-commerce site. It has a Master XML sitemap for topics and categories.
<img alt="Master XML sitemap example for topics and categories" class="zooming lazyloaded" data-src="s:static.semrushomcdn-cgiimagewidth=1010bloguploadsmediad75bd75b81af2a451f9a20d3d78943f79abeimage.png" data-gtm-vis-has-fired-9025619_57="1" src="s:static.semrushomcdn-cgiimagewidth=1010bloguploadsmediad75bd75b81a…image.png">
As you can see in the screenshot below, topic splitting allows Walmart to see how Google indexes different areas of the site, such as fashion or entertainment.