Sitemap Validator: is your sitemap telling Google the right thing?
Enter your domain or sitemap URL and we will check the XML structure, robots.txt declaration, URL formats and dates, then open the first 50 URLs one by one to find broken and redirected pages.
Why does a sitemap matter?
A sitemap is the XML file that tells search engines which pages your site has and when they last changed. Google also finds pages through links, but for new, deep or poorly linked pages the sitemap is often the only route. A faulty sitemap points Google at the wrong URLs and wastes your crawl budget.
What does this tool check?
- Discovery: if you enter just a domain, it finds the sitemap through the “Sitemap:” line in robots.txt, or at sitemap.xml, sitemap_index.xml and wp-sitemap.xml.
- Structure: is the file valid XML, is the root urlset or sitemapindex, is the namespace correct, are the 50,000-URL and 50 MB limits respected?
- Child sitemaps: for a sitemap index, it opens the first 10 child sitemaps and shows each one’s status and URL count.
- URLs: relative URLs, other domains, www mismatches, spaces, # fragments, duplicates; valid lastmod, changefreq and priority values.
- Live check: opens the first 50 URLs one by one and lists those that do not return 200, redirect or are broken.
How to read the results
- Redirect: a sitemap should only list final, canonical URLs. Every redirected URL tells Google “crawl this, but the real page is elsewhere.”
- Broken: URLs returning 404 or 410 should be removed from the sitemap right away.
- Unverified: the server refused the automated request (403, 429) or did not answer. Usually a firewall; open the URL in a browser to check.
- Not declared in robots.txt: optional, but adding a “Sitemap: https://yoursite.com/sitemap.xml” line to robots.txt lets every search engine find it.
Limitations
The tool live-checks the first 10 child sitemaps of an index and the first 50 URLs in total; it does not crawl large sites in full. It does not follow redirects or show where they lead; our broken link checker is better suited for that. Results are cached for 15 minutes.
Reading sitemaps and sitemap indexes, checking URLs with HEAD and confirming failures with GET, and separating “broken” from “unverified” results are adapted from Emre Yilmaz’s open-source sitemap-checker (MIT licence). Thanks for the work.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Short answers about sitemaps.
Which pages belong in a sitemap?
Only canonical pages that return 200 and that you want indexed. noindex pages, redirects, filter and internal search result pages should stay out.
Do changefreq and priority still matter?
Google has said it ignores both. They do no harm but are not worth effort. lastmod, when kept accurate, is used by Google.
How do I submit my sitemap to Google?
In Google Search Console, go to Indexing → Sitemaps, enter the URL and submit. Also add a “Sitemap:” line to robots.txt so Bing and other search engines find it too.
Is it free, and is my data stored?
It is free with no sign-up. Results are cached for 15 minutes and then deleted.