XML namespace
XHTML
XHTML markup — and, in sitemaps, the namespace that carries <xhtml:link> hreflang alternates, which is why stripping it destroys hreflang coverage.
xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"Beyond XHTML documents themselves, this namespace has a second life inside sitemap files: the <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="…"> element is how a sitemap declares language and region alternates for a URL.
That is why a sitemap with international targeting declares two namespaces, and why stripping "unused" namespace declarations from a sitemap can silently destroy its hreflang coverage.
- URI
http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml- Prefix
xhtml- Elements
htmlheadbodylink
Specification: XHTML 1.0
Formats that use it
XML sitemap
<urlset>A list of a site's URLs with optional freshness hints, read by every major search engine. One <urlset> root, one <url> per page, <loc> mandatory.
SVG
<svg>A vector image format that is genuine XML, and therefore both diffable and a security surface: scripts and external references travel inside the file.
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