Yes, there are different types of sitemaps and there are up to five different sitemap types. HTML and XML sitemaps are the two most common and common sitemap types.
A sitemap, depending on its type, is important to provide users or search engines with a kind of table of contents about your website. See also: How important is a sitemap for indexing my site?
HTML sitemap
In contrast to the XML sitemap, an HTML sitemap is intended specifically for the user and is to be understood as a graphically clear table of contents for a website. In addition, it is also an important means for search engines to crawl the entire website.
An HTML sitemap is characterized by logically grouped content and a hierarchically comprehensible and clear depiction of the website structure.
The internet service provider Strato offers its visitors a clearly categorized sitemap:
Tip: Every webmaster can quickly and easily create an XML and HTML sitemap for his website. The online sitemap generator from XML-Sitemaps.com will help.
XML Sitemap
An XML sitemap, in contrast to an HTML sitemap, is specifically for search engines. With the XML sitemap as a structured table of contents, the search engine finds new, poorly linked or deeply nested pages reliably and quickly.
Calling up an XML sitemap in a web browser; here from zalando.de:
Viewing an XML sitemap does not bring any added value for the user, since the file, which is in machine-readable format (here XML), is usually “unstyled”.
Using so-called style sheets ( CSS ), XML data can be formatted as desired in their presentation.
Images Sitemap
An image sitemap, also known as an image sitemap, is an XML sitemap specifically for images.
With an image XML sitemap, the image content of your own website can be expanded to include additional features, such as e.g. B. a location (geo_location), supplement and send separately to Google. The separate provision of an image sitemap can be used to rank your own images in Google image search.
Image XML sitemap is for search engines only:
Video Sitemap
With a separate video XML sitemap , the video content of your own website can be supplemented with additional features, such as e.g. B. the classification into a category (category), and serve to improve the ranking of videos within the Google video search .
In addition, Google recommends enriching the video content with the appropriate schema.org markup in order to obtain so-called rich snippets for pages in the organic search. In order to mark up your own video content quickly and easily with schema.org markup, we have developed the free Video Rich Snippet Generator based on schema.org .
Video XML sitemap: It is used exclusively by search engines and links video content with additional attributes:
News Sitemap
A separate News XML sitemap allows you to add publication-specific information, such as e.g. B. the publication date (date), is added. The provision of a news sitemap can have a positive effect on the ranking of your own content on Google News since Google will be notified of new content more quickly.
News-XML-Sitemap: It serves only the search engines and links news content with further attributes:
what does google say
If your site’s pages are properly linked, our web crawlers can usually collect most of your site. A sitemap can improve your site’s crawl ability.
Source: Search Console Help