Sitemap Checker
Validate your XML sitemap, inspect listed URLs, and uncover issues that reduce crawl and index efficiency.
Read-only check. CodeAva fetches your sitemap to inspect it and does not modify your site or sitemap. Only publicly accessible sitemap files can be fetched. Sitemap validation helps improve crawl quality, but it does not guarantee indexing.
Overview
The Sitemap Checker validates XML sitemap files, inspects listed URLs, and surfaces structural and quality issues that reduce how efficiently search engines crawl and index your site. It supports both regular sitemaps (<urlset>) and sitemap index files (<sitemapindex>).
The tool checks for XML validity (well-formed structure, valid tags), URL quality (absolute vs. relative URLs, duplicate entries, invalid entries), metadata formatting (lastmod dates in W3C format, changefreq and priority values within accepted ranges), and coverage (total entries, entries with issues, and a breakdown of what needs fixing).
Input mode supports both fetching a live sitemap URL and pasting XML content directly — useful for reviewing a sitemap before deploying. Large sitemaps (over 500 URLs) are summarised with the first 500 entries displayed in the UI; the complete results are available in the downloadable report.
Use cases
When to use it
- Pre-submission validationvalidate your sitemap before submitting it to Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools to avoid common rejection reasons.
- Post-migration cleanupafter a site migration, check the new sitemap for leftover old URLs, broken entries, or redirect-heavy listings.
- Crawl budget reviewidentify duplicate entries, broken URLs, and low-quality inclusions that waste crawl budget on pages that should not be indexed.
- Content audit starting pointuse the URL list as a baseline inventory of everything currently included in your sitemap for a content or SEO audit.
- Sitemap index inspectionquickly verify that a sitemap index correctly references all child sitemaps and that each child sitemap URL is valid and reachable.
When it's not enough
- Real-time URL health checksthe checker validates sitemap structure and metadata but does not fetch or check the HTTP status of individual listed URLs. Use the Website Audit or HTTP Headers Checker for per-URL status checks.
- Guaranteed indexinga clean sitemap improves crawl efficiency but does not guarantee that every listed URL will be indexed. Indexing decisions are made by search engines based on content quality and other signals.
- Sitemaps requiring authenticationonly publicly accessible sitemaps can be fetched. Password-protected or IP-restricted sitemaps must be pasted manually.
How to use it
- 1
Choose fetch or paste mode
Use "Fetch URL" to enter your sitemap URL directly. Use "Paste XML" to validate sitemap content before deploying.
- 2
Run the check
Click Check Sitemap. The tool parses the XML, detects the sitemap type, and returns a summary of issues, URL entries, and coverage statistics.
- 3
Check the validation status
The status banner indicates whether the sitemap is valid XML, has warnings, or has critical issues. Start with critical issues — XML parse errors prevent the sitemap from being read at all.
- 4
Review the URL list
Scroll through listed URLs. Entries flagged with issues (duplicates, relative URLs, invalid metadata) are highlighted inline. Fix these entries in your sitemap generator.
- 5
Download and re-test
Download the report for a full record of findings. After fixing issues, re-run the check until the report is clean before submitting to Search Console.
Common errors and fixes
XML parse error — sitemap cannot be read
Check for unescaped special characters (&, <, >, quotes) in URL values or text content. Ensure all XML tags are properly closed. The content must be well-formed XML with a <urlset> or <sitemapindex> root element.
Relative URLs in <loc> elements
All <loc> values must be absolute URLs starting with https:// or http://. Replace /page/ with https://yourdomain.com/page/. Most sitemap generators do this correctly — check your configuration if relative URLs appear.
Duplicate URLs in the sitemap
Each URL should appear once. Duplicates reduce crawl efficiency and may cause search engines to ignore some entries. Deduplicate your sitemap list in your CMS or static site generator.
Invalid lastmod date format
Use W3C date format: YYYY-MM-DD (e.g. 2024-01-15) or full ISO 8601 (e.g. 2024-01-15T10:00:00Z). Dates in other formats are not valid and will be ignored by crawlers.
Invalid changefreq value
Valid changefreq values are: always, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, never. Other values are not part of the sitemap protocol and will be ignored.
Sitemap exceeds 50,000 URL limit
Split the sitemap into multiple files and create a sitemap index file that references all of them. Each child sitemap should contain no more than 50,000 URLs and be under 50MB uncompressed.
Sitemap index entry missing <loc>
Every <sitemap> entry in a sitemap index must contain a <loc> element with the absolute URL of the child sitemap file. Entries without <loc> are invalid and will be ignored by crawlers.