📰 Sitemap.xml Checker
Check and analyze the sitemap.xml file for any website to verify SEO configuration.
What the check covers
Enter a domain and the tool goes looking for its sitemaps the same two
ways a crawler does - the conventional address at the root of the host,
and any Sitemap: lines declared in robots.txt - then reports
what it found and how many.
It is a discovery check. It tells you a sitemap exists and is being served, which is the failure people actually hit; it does not open every URL inside and confirm each one returns 200. For that, submit the file in Search Console and read the coverage report it produces.
What belongs inside
- 50,000 URLs and 50 MB uncompressed per file. Past either limit, split the file and list the parts in a sitemap index.
- Canonical, indexable URLs only. A sitemap listing
pages that redirect, 404, or carry
noindexis a mixed message: it asks for crawling and refuses indexing in the same breath. - Absolute URLs on the same host as the sitemap, with
&written as&. An unescaped ampersand makes the XML invalid and the whole file is dropped. - An honest
lastmod. Google uses it when a site's dates prove reliable, and stops trusting them entirely once it finds every URL claiming to have changed this morning.
changefreq and priority are
in the sitemap protocol and Google ignores both. Priority is relative
within your own site and tells search engines nothing they can compare
across sites, so filling it in is effort with no effect.Frequently asked questions
Does having a sitemap improve rankings?
No. It affects discovery, not position. Where it earns its keep is on large sites, on new sites with few incoming links, and on pages that internal links reach poorly - a sitemap gives those a route in. A small, well-linked site that is already fully indexed gains nothing from adding one.
Where should the sitemap file live, and how do I submit it?
Anywhere on the host, though the root is the convention, and it may
only list URLs at or below its own directory. Add a
Sitemap: line to robots.txt so any crawler can find it, and
submit the URL once in Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Google
retired its old ping endpoint in 2023, so there is no longer anything to
call after each update.
My pages are in the sitemap but not in the index. Why?
A sitemap is an invitation, not an instruction. "Discovered - currently not indexed" in Search Console means Google saw the URL and chose not to spend a crawl on it, which is a judgement about the page rather than a fault in the file. Thin or duplicated content and pages nothing links to are the common causes.