A broken or missing sitemap means Google indexes less of your site than it should. This validator checks structure, URL count, and last-modified dates, then gives you a specific list of issues to fix.
This tool fetches your sitemap file and validates the XML structure, URL format, lastmod dates, and file size. It checks what your sitemap declares, not whether those pages are indexed.
For indexing status and coverage reports, use Google Search Console.
This tool fetches your sitemap, parses the XML, and validates it against the sitemap protocol specification. It checks URL count (the maximum is 50,000 URLs per sitemap file), XML structure validity, lastmod date formats, file size (maximum 50MB uncompressed), response time, and common issues like relative URLs, mixed HTTP and HTTPS protocols, duplicate entries, and stale last-modified dates.
A sitemap index is a sitemap file that points to other sitemaps instead of individual URLs. Large sites use them to split their URL inventory across multiple sitemap files, one per category, content type, or language. This tool automatically detects sitemap index files, fetches the child sitemaps, and reports the combined URL count so you get an accurate picture of your full crawl coverage.
Google allows a maximum of 50,000 URLs per sitemap file and a maximum file size of 50MB uncompressed. Sites with more than 50,000 indexable URLs should use a sitemap index file to split the inventory. This tool warns you if you are approaching the URL or file size limit so you can split the sitemap before it becomes a problem.
Yes, but only if the dates are accurate. Correct lastmod dates help crawlers prioritize recently updated pages and discover changes faster. Use W3C Datetime format, for example 2024-01-15 or 2024-01-15T10:30:00Z. Avoid the common CMS mistake of setting all lastmod values to the same date: search engines recognize this pattern and may ignore the dates entirely, treating them as unreliable.
Most sites place their sitemap at yoursite.com/sitemap.xml or yoursite.com/sitemap_index.xml. You can also check your robots.txt file at yoursite.com/robots.txt for a Sitemap: directive that points to the correct URL. WordPress sites with Yoast SEO or RankMath typically auto-generate a sitemap index. Enter the direct sitemap URL into this tool rather than your domain URL.
No. We fetch and parse your sitemap in real time to run the validation checks. Nothing is stored on our servers.
This free tool gives you a one-time snapshot of your sitemap health right now. Ooty SEO monitors your sitemap daily, alerts you when URLs are unexpectedly removed or stale entries accumulate, and lets you query your indexing health inside ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude.
Your XML sitemap is a direct instruction to search engines: here are the pages I want indexed, and here is when they last changed. Without a valid sitemap, crawlers rely on link discovery alone, which means orphaned pages (pages with no internal links pointing to them) may never get found.
For large sites with over 1,000 pages, sitemaps are essential for crawl budget management. Google allocates a finite number of crawls per day to each domain. A clean sitemap with accurate lastmod dates helps Google prioritize recently updated pages and skip unchanged ones. A broken sitemap, with invalid XML, stale dates, or URLs returning 404 errors, wastes crawl budget on pages that do not need it.
Google Search Console reports indexing issues, but only after the problem has already affected your rankings. This tool catches sitemap errors before you submit them to search engines.
Sitemap: directive.If your site has over 10,000 URLs, or if your content falls into distinct categories (blog posts, products, category pages, landing pages), use a sitemap index. A sitemap index points to multiple child sitemaps, one per content type or section. This makes debugging easier: if product pages have issues, you only need to check the product sitemap. It also helps search engines understand your site structure at a glance.
After validating your sitemap, run the SEO Analyzer on individual pages to check on-page optimization for title tags, meta descriptions, headings, and more. Use the Robots.txt Generator to ensure your sitemap is referenced correctly in your robots.txt, and the HTTP Status Checker to verify that URLs listed in your sitemap return 200.