Free XML sitemap checker

How to use it

1. Enter your website, such as www.yoursite.com.sg, or the full address of a sitemap, such as www.yoursite.com.sg/sitemap.xml.
2. We look for the sitemap in your robots.txt and at the usual addresses, check the XML, then read up to 500 of the pages it lists and load up to 100 of them.
3. Start with the red items: pages that are broken or marked noindex. Use the filter to see one type of problem at a time.
4. Download the CSV to share the list with your developer, fix the sitemap, then run the check again.

What is an XML sitemap?

An XML sitemap is a file, usually at /sitemap.xml, that lists the pages on your website you want search engines to find. Google and Bing read it to discover new pages and to notice when pages change. It does not make Google index a page, but it helps the right pages get found, especially on new sites and sites with pages that few other pages link to.

Large sites split the list into several sitemaps and point to them from a sitemap index file. WordPress SEO plugins, Shopify, Webflow and most modern frameworks create sitemaps for you, which is why problems often go unnoticed until someone checks.

What a good XML sitemap contains

A sitemap should list only the pages you want to appear in search results, at their final address. For each address, that means:

• It loads with a 200 status. No redirects, no missing pages and no server errors.
• It can be indexed: no noindex in a meta robots tag or an X-Robots-Tag header, and no Disallow rule in your robots.txt that stops Google crawling it.
• It is the canonical version. If the page's canonical tag points to another address, list that address instead.
• It is a full, absolute URL on the same host and protocol as the site, such as https://www.yoursite.com.sg/services/, with any & written as & inside the XML.
• Its lastmod date, if you use one, is in W3C date format and shows when the content last changed in a meaningful way.

Google's sitemap guidelines set a limit of 50,000 URLs or 50 MB uncompressed per sitemap file, so larger sites need a sitemap index. Google ignores the priority and changefreq values, and uses lastmod only when it is consistently accurate. The full format is described at sitemaps.org.

Common sitemap problems after a redesign or migration

A new website often launches with a sitemap that still describes the old one, or describes the new one before it is ready. These are the problems to look for after a rebuild:

• Old addresses that now redirect. The URL structure changed, the redirects work, but the sitemap still lists the old URLs. List the new addresses instead.
• Pages left on noindex. A setting used to hide the staging site, such as WordPress's "Discourage search engines from indexing this site", stays switched on after launch.
• The wrong host. Addresses from a staging or preview domain, such as yourstore.myshopify.com, yoursite.webflow.io or staging.yoursite.com.sg, or http:// and non-www versions after a move to https://www., stay in the sitemap.
• Canonical tags pointing elsewhere. Templates copied from the staging site point every page's canonical tag at the wrong address.
• Thin or test pages. Tag archives, attachment pages, sample pages and old landing pages get listed because the plugin includes everything by default.

Google's guide to moving a site with URL changes describes submitting a sitemap of the old URLs alongside the new one for monitoring during a move, and says redirect warnings for that old-URL sitemap are normal. Your main sitemap should list only the new addresses. Run this check on launch day and again a week later.

How to submit a sitemap to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools

Google Search Console: open your property, choose the Sitemaps report from the menu, paste the sitemap address under "Add a new sitemap" and press Submit. You need owner permission on the property. The report shows whether Google could read it and how many pages it found. Google's help page on the Sitemaps report explains each status.

Bing Webmaster Tools: add and verify your site, open Sitemaps and submit the same address. If your site is already verified in Search Console, Bing can import your site and its sitemaps from there. See Bing's sitemap help.

robots.txt: also add a line such as Sitemap: https://www.yoursite.com.sg/sitemap.xml to your robots.txt. Search engines that read robots.txt then find the sitemap without being told.

How this sitemap checker works

We look for Sitemap: lines in your robots.txt, then try /sitemap.xml and /sitemap_index.xml. Sitemap index files are followed to the sitemaps they list, a limited number at a time. We read up to 500 addresses, picked evenly from each sitemap, and check all of them for format problems such as duplicates, http:// addresses, staging and other hosts, bad dates and pages your own robots.txt blocks. Each sitemap file is also checked for XML basics against the sitemap protocol, such as the namespace, closing tags, plain & signs in addresses and valid priority and changefreq values. RSS and Atom feeds used as sitemaps are recognised too.

We then load up to 100 of those pages on your own site, five at a time, the way a browser would, to see the status code, redirects, noindex and canonical tags. Addresses on other hosts are flagged but not loaded. If your site answers 429 or 503 to ask us to slow down, we stop loading pages, and pages we could not load in time are marked as not checked rather than broken. Larger sites are checked in part, and the report says how many pages were loaded. Gzipped sitemaps (.gz) are not read. Nothing is stored, and the CSV is created in your browser.

When the sitemap is clean, our llms.txt generator can turn it into a short guide to your site for AI tools, and our AI search checker shows whether AI crawlers can reach your pages.