XML sitemaps · broken URLs · free
Sitemap checker
Enter a site or its sitemap. We find the sitemap the way Google does, check that it is a valid XML sitemap, count its URLs and test them for 404s, redirects and robots.txt blocks.
What is an XML sitemap?
A file that lists the pages a site wants crawled, so search engines do not have to discover them by following links. A large site splits its pages over several sitemaps and lists them in a sitemap index.
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
<url><loc>https://example.com/shoes</loc></url>
</urlset>Full addresses on the sitemap's own host, up to 50,000 per file.
What the checker looks at
- Where the sitemap is. The Sitemap: lines in robots.txt, else /sitemap.xml, /sitemap_index.xml and /wp-sitemap.xml, the addresses CMSs use.
- Whether Google can read it. The status it answers, and whether it is a real <urlset> or <sitemapindex>, gzip included, rather than a web page.
- How many URLs it lists. For an index, each of the first 5 sitemaps is read and counted.
- Broken links. The first 20 URLs are requested: any that answer an error or redirect elsewhere.
- Entries Google ignores. URLs on another host, addresses that are not full URLs, and pages robots.txt blocks.
Questions about sitemaps
How do I find a website's sitemap?
Look in its robots.txt first: https://example.com/robots.txt usually ends with a Sitemap: line naming the file. If it does not, try /sitemap.xml, then /sitemap_index.xml (Yoast and Rank Math) and /wp-sitemap.xml (WordPress itself). The checker above tries all of them in that order.
What does "Sitemap could not be read" mean in Search Console?
Google fetched the address but did not get a valid XML sitemap back: the file answers an error, redirects to a web page, or is HTML, often a 404 page served with status 200. Enter the sitemap address above to see what it really answers. "Couldn't fetch" is often just Google not having tried yet, and fixes itself within a few days.
Which URLs belong in a sitemap?
Only the canonical address of each page you want in search, answering 200. Redirects, 404s, noindex pages, pages blocked by robots.txt and URLs on another host are all ignored by Google and show up as errors in the Page indexing report, so a clean sitemap is one with none of them.
How big can a sitemap be?
50,000 URLs and 50 MB uncompressed per file. A larger site splits its pages over several sitemaps and lists them in a sitemap index, which most CMSs do automatically.
How do I submit a sitemap to Google?
In Search Console, open Sitemaps, enter the sitemap's address and press Submit. Also add a Sitemap: line with the full address to robots.txt, which Bing and the other search engines read as well.
How do I check a sitemap for broken links?
Enter the site or the sitemap above: the checker requests the first 20 URLs it lists and shows any that answer an error, redirect, sit on another host or are blocked by robots.txt. For every URL of a large site, use the Page indexing report in Search Console filtered by that sitemap.