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XML Sitemap Checker

Find a site’s sitemap, validate its XML, and check the URLs inside it for 404s, redirects and robots.txt blocks.

No account needed. https:// is assumed if you leave it off.

What an XML sitemap is for

A sitemap is a list of the URLs you want search engines to know about. It does not guarantee crawling or indexing — it is a discovery aid, and its biggest value is on large sites, new sites with few external links, and sites where pages are not well connected by internal linking. Listing a URL in a sitemap is a suggestion; the crawler still decides.

Because it is XML, a sitemap is unforgiving in a way HTML is not. A single unescaped ampersand makes the whole document invalid, and one invalid document loses every URL in it, not just the offending line. The same goes for the namespace: it must be exactly the sitemaps.org schema string, or the file is rejected outright. Those two mistakes account for the large majority of sitemaps that silently do nothing.

The other common failure is subtler: a valid sitemap full of URLs that 404, redirect, or are blocked by robots.txt. That is a sitemap actively wasting crawl budget and sending a signal that the site is poorly maintained. This tool checks the URLs inside the sitemap as well as the file itself, respecting the target site’s own robots.txt as it goes and capping how many URLs it will request in one run.

How to Fix Common Sitemap Checker Issues

Reference guide for resolving the most frequent configuration errors and warnings.

An HTML page is being served instead of XML

The URL returns a web page rather than a sitemap. Almost always this means the sitemap does not exist and the server is returning its 404 page with a 200 status.

The Fix: Confirm the sitemap URL, and make sure missing files return a real 404 rather than a page.

The sitemap has no XML namespace

The urlset element must declare the sitemaps.org namespace. Without it the file is not a valid sitemap and search engines reject it outright.

The Fix: Add the xmlns attribute to the root element.

<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">

The XML namespace is wrong

The namespace must be exactly the sitemaps.org schema URL. A typo, or an http/https mismatch, invalidates the whole file.

The Fix: Set it to the exact string below — it is an identifier, not a link, so it does not change to https.

<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">

An unescaped ampersand

A raw & is not legal in XML. One of them makes the entire document invalid, so every URL in the sitemap is lost, not just the offending line.

The Fix: Escape it as &amp;. This is the most common sitemap syntax error and it comes from URLs with query strings being written out unescaped.

<loc>https://example.com/search?a=1&amp;b=2</loc>

An invalid lastmod date

lastmod must be a W3C datetime. Anything else is ignored, so you lose the freshness signal the field exists to provide.

The Fix: Use YYYY-MM-DD, or a full ISO 8601 timestamp with a timezone.

<lastmod>2024-01-15</lastmod>

An entry with no loc element

Every <url> must contain exactly one <loc>. An entry without one describes nothing and is skipped.

The Fix: Add the missing <loc>, or remove the empty entry.

Duplicate URLs in the sitemap

Duplicates waste crawl budget and usually mean the sitemap is generated from a query that is not deduplicated.

The Fix: De-duplicate at generation time. Pay attention to URLs that differ only by trailing slash or query parameter.

Over the 50,000 URL limit

A single sitemap may contain at most 50,000 URLs and be at most 50MB uncompressed. Past that, it is rejected.

The Fix: Split it into several sitemaps and list them in a sitemap index file.

<sitemapindex xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <sitemap><loc>https://example.com/sitemap-1.xml</loc></sitemap>
  <sitemap><loc>https://example.com/sitemap-2.xml</loc></sitemap>
</sitemapindex>

Frequently Asked Questions

Where should my sitemap live?
Anywhere on the same host, though /sitemap.xml is the convention. What matters more is referencing it from robots.txt and submitting it in Search Console.
How many URLs can one sitemap hold?
50,000 URLs and 50MB uncompressed. Past either limit, split it into several sitemaps and list those in a sitemap index file.
Do priority and changefreq do anything?
Google ignores both. lastmod is used, but only when it is accurate — a site that stamps every URL with today’s date teaches Google to ignore the field entirely.
Should a sitemap include redirects or noindex pages?
No. A sitemap should list canonical, indexable, 200-status URLs only. Anything else sends a mixed signal about which pages you actually want ranked.

Related checks

Sitemap Finder

Find the XML sitemap for any domain. Reads the Sitemap directive in robots.txt, then falls back to the conventional paths.

Sitemap Validator

Validate an XML sitemap against the sitemaps.org protocol: namespace, structure, entry limits, lastmod dates and priority values.

XML Sitemap Checker

Check an XML sitemap end to end: is it valid XML, is it the right namespace, and do the URLs inside it actually resolve?

Other free tools

Robots.txt Tester

Paste a domain to read its robots.txt, then test any URL path against the rules and see exactly which directive allows or blocks it.

Robots.txt Checker

Check a site’s robots.txt for the mistakes that quietly stop Google crawling: a missing file, a stray Disallow: /, syntax errors and no sitemap directive.

Robots.txt Validator

Validate robots.txt syntax line by line. Every error and warning is reported with its line number and what to change.

Meta Checker

Check a page’s title, meta description, canonical and robots tags in one pass — measured in pixels, the way Google actually truncates them.

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