Sitemap Checker
Short answer
Validate your XML sitemap structure, URLs, and accessibility.
What it does not do: It reads up to 5 child sitemaps of an index and checks the file, not the status, canonical or indexability of each listed URL; priority and changefreq are skipped because Google ignores them.
What It Does
Fetches your /sitemap.xml (and, for a sitemap index, up to 5 of its child sitemaps) and checks the file itself: whether any listed URL still uses http://, whether lastmod dates are present, whether robots.txt declares the sitemap and whether any child sitemap fails to load.
Why It Matters
A sitemap helps search engines find the pages you want crawled, especially new pages and pages with few internal links. Listing http:// addresses on an HTTPS site sends crawlers through redirects, and lastmod dates help Google decide what to recrawl when they are consistently accurate.
How It Works
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Enter your domain — we check `/sitemap.xml` at its root
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We fetch and parse the XML; for a sitemap index, we also read its first 5 child sitemaps
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Count the listed URLs, check for http:// addresses and lastmod dates, and confirm robots.txt declares the sitemap
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Return the URL count, child-sitemap health, and a recommendation
Sample input + output
host: rankproof.eu
sitemap.xml: 200 OK child sitemaps: 3 total URLs: 412 lastmod tags present: yes OK HTTP (non-HTTPS) URLs: 0 OK child sitemaps unreachable: 0 OK declared in robots.txt: yes OK
Who Uses This
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SEO Manager
After publishing a batch of pages, check that the sitemap's URL count went up and robots.txt still declares it.
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Technical Lead
After a migration, confirm the new sitemap lists HTTPS URLs and carries lastmod dates.
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CMS Admin
Auto-generated sitemaps from CMS plugins can balloon with drafts or trash pages — a URL-count spike is often the first sign.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Sitemap or sitemap-index?
- One sitemap can list up to 50,000 URLs and be up to 50 MB uncompressed. Larger sites split their URLs across several sitemaps listed in a sitemap index. This tool reads up to 5 child sitemaps of an index.
- Should I include lastmod?
- Yes, if the dates are accurate. Google uses lastmod when it is consistently correct and ignores it otherwise. Google ignores the priority and changefreq fields, so this tool does not check them.
- What URLs should NOT be in the sitemap?
- Any URL that is noindex, blocked by robots.txt, redirected, returns non-200, or is non-canonical. Sitemap should match canonical, indexable, current URLs only.
- How often should I update the sitemap?
- Whenever pages are added or removed. Most CMS sitemaps update automatically; after big changes, check that the URL count matches your live pages.
- Does Google guarantee to crawl every URL in my sitemap?
- No. A sitemap is a hint; Google still decides what to crawl and index.