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XML Sitemap Checker

Locate a site's sitemap through robots.txt, validate it against the sitemaps.org protocol, count its URLs and spot-check that the pages it lists actually load.

SITEMAP VALIDATION

Check a sitemap

Live test
With a domain, the checker looks in robots.txt first, then tries /sitemap.xml, /sitemap_index.xml and /wp-sitemap.xml. Gzip-compressed sitemaps are supported.

The check runs on the VPSLake server. robots.txt and the sitemap are read in memory and discarded after the answer is sent. Nothing is stored, and private or internal network addresses are refused.

HOW TO USE IT

Validate a sitemap in four steps

Run it after launching a site, changing your CMS or SEO plugin, or moving to a new server.

  1. 1

    Enter a domain or sitemap URL

    Give just example.com to let the checker find the sitemap, or paste the full address of a specific sitemap or child sitemap.

  2. 2

    Run the check

    Select Check Sitemap. The server reads robots.txt, downloads the sitemap, unpacks it if it is gzipped and parses it as a stream.

  3. 3

    Review the findings

    You get the root element and namespace, the entry count against the 50,000 limit, XML errors with line numbers, invalid dates, duplicate and off-site URLs.

  4. 4

    Check the URLs it lists

    Up to 15 listed URLs are requested. Any that redirect or fail should be replaced with their final working address or removed from the sitemap.

What an XML sitemap is for

A sitemap lists the URLs you want search engines to discover, optionally with the date each one last changed. It does not raise rankings by itself, but it helps crawlers find new and updated pages quickly, especially on new sites or deep pages with few internal links.

Large sites split their URLs across several files and list those files in a sitemap index.

Declare it in robots.txt

Add a line such as Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml to /robots.txt. Every major crawler reads it, so the sitemap is found even without Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools. You may list several sitemaps, one per line.

Google retired its sitemap ping endpoint in 2023, so robots.txt and the webmaster consoles are the ways to announce a sitemap now.

Keep the sitemap clean

List only canonical URLs that answer 200 OK and that you want indexed. Leave out redirects, 404s, noindex pages, login and cart pages, internal search results and parameter variants. A short accurate sitemap is a stronger signal than a long noisy one.

Use real <lastmod> dates only when content changes. Dates that update on every request teach crawlers to ignore them.

Serving a sitemap from your server

Send it as application/xml or text/xml with a 200 status and no redirect. A static file regenerated by a cron job is the lightest option on a VPS; a dynamic sitemap should be cached so a crawler fetching it cannot slow the site.

Escape special characters inside URLs: a bare & must be written as &amp;, or the whole file stops parsing.

Limits of this check

Each check reads up to 10 MB of the main sitemap, opens the first three child sitemaps of an index and tests up to 15 listed URLs, all within a ten-second budget. On very large sites the counts are therefore a lower bound and some stages may be skipped, which the result states. It validates structure and values, not whether search engines will index every URL.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

XML Sitemap Checker FAQ

First in robots.txt, where it reads every Sitemap: line and tries the first three. If robots.txt lists none, it tries the common defaults: /sitemap.xml, /sitemap_index.xml used by many SEO plugins, and /wp-sitemap.xml built into WordPress. You can always paste a sitemap URL directly.
The protocol allows at most 50,000 URLs and 50 MB uncompressed per file. Above that, split the URLs into several sitemaps and list them in a sitemap index, which can itself reference up to 50,000 sitemaps.
Google has said it ignores both. They are still part of the protocol, so the checker validates them when present, but your effort is better spent on accurate <lastmod> dates and a list of only indexable URLs.
A sitemap may normally only list URLs on its own site. Off-site URLs are ignored unless you have verified ownership of both sites in the same webmaster account. The warning often reveals a staging domain or an old hostname left in the sitemap generator settings.
Browsers forgive a lot: they may render an XSL-styled page, follow redirects silently or show a cached copy. Crawlers see the raw response. A firewall that blocks data-centre traffic, a wrong content type, a redirect or an HTML error page served instead of XML all show up here exactly as a crawler would see them.
No. robots.txt and the sitemap are parsed in memory and the result goes straight back to your browser. Only an anonymous rate-limit counter is kept for a few minutes, so each visitor can run a fair number of checks.