I thought I should send "text/xml", but then I read that I should send "application/xml". Does it matter? Can someone explain the difference?
5 Answers
Other answers here address the general question of what the proper Content-Type for an XML response is, and conclude (as with What's the difference between text/xml vs application/xml for webservice response) that both text/xml and application/xml are permissible. However, none address whether there are any rules specific to sitemaps.
Answer: there aren't. The sitemap spec is https://www.sitemaps.org, and using Google site: searches you can confirm that it does not contain the words or phrases mime, mimetype, content-type, application/xml, or text/xml anywhere. In other words, it is entirely silent on the topic of what Content-Type should be used for serving sitemaps.
In the absence of any commentary in the sitemap spec directly addressing this question, we can safely assume that the same rules apply as when choosing the Content-Type of any other XML document - i.e. that it may be either text/xml or application/xml.
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