XML sitemap validator.
Enter a website or a sitemap address. We find the sitemap (from robots.txt or the usual locations), check that it's valid XML within Google's limits, review its lastmod dates, and test a sample of the URLs it lists for errors, redirects and noindex tags.
- Free, no sign-up
- We check public information only. How your data is handled
How to use the XML Sitemap Validator
- Enter your domain (we'll find the sitemap) or the full sitemap URL.
- Check the validity and limits summary first.
- Look at the sample: every listed URL should return 200 and be indexable.
- Submit the sitemap in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools once it's clean.
What a sitemap is for
An XML sitemap lists the pages you want search engines to find, with optional dates of when each last changed. It helps new or deep pages get discovered sooner and tells crawlers what's been updated. It doesn't force indexing: Google still decides which pages are worth including.
Large sites split their sitemap into several files tied together by a sitemap index. WordPress creates one at /wp-sitemap.xml, and SEO plugins like Yoast and Rank Math at /sitemap_index.xml.
Rules a sitemap must follow
- Valid XML, UTF-8 encoded, using the sitemaps.org format.
- At most 50,000 URLs and 50 MB (uncompressed) per file.
- Full, absolute URLs on the same site as the sitemap.
- Only canonical, indexable pages that return 200: no redirects, errors or noindex pages.
- lastmod in W3C date format, and only when it's true. Google ignores lastmod on sites where it's always "today".
Problems we often find
Old http:// URLs after a move to https. Pages that redirect because the URL structure changed. Tag, author and attachment pages that add thousands of thin URLs. Noindexed pages left in by a plugin. Staging URLs. Each one wastes crawl attention and muddies the picture in Search Console.
Fixing these is usually a settings change in your SEO plugin. For a site-wide check, our technical SEO service and SEO audit cover indexing in depth, and our robots.txt checker confirms the sitemap is listed there.
About the XML Sitemap Validator.
Where is my sitemap?
Usually /sitemap.xml, /sitemap_index.xml (Yoast, Rank Math) or /wp-sitemap.xml (WordPress). It should also be listed in your robots.txt. Enter your domain and we'll look in all of those.
Does a sitemap improve rankings?
Not directly. It helps search engines find and recrawl pages, which matters most for new sites, large sites and pages with few internal links.
Should every page be in the sitemap?
Every page you want indexed, and nothing else. Leave out redirects, errors, noindex pages, duplicates and thin archive pages.
Why sample only 10 URLs?
Fetching thousands of pages would take minutes and put load on the site. Ten pages, the first five plus five at random, usually show whether there is a pattern of problems.
Do I need to resubmit after changes?
Not usually. Google rechecks submitted sitemaps regularly. Resubmit in Search Console after big changes to speed things up.
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