Sitemap Checker
Short answer
Validate your XML sitemap structure, URLs, and accessibility.
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.