Validate your XML sitemap
Validate XML sitemaps with sitemap index support. Check for errors, detect duplicates, verify Google compliance, and export results as CSV.
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What is an XML sitemap?
A roadmap that helps search engines discover, crawl, and index your pages efficiently.
Discovery
Helps search engines find pages that might not be discovered through internal linking alone.
Freshness
The lastmod date tells crawlers when content was last updated, prioritizing fresh content.
Organization
Large sites use sitemap indexes to organize URLs into logical groups (blog, products, pages).
Sitemap validation checklist
- 1File is accessible at /sitemap.xml or declared in robots.txt
- 2XML is well-formed with proper namespace declaration
- 3All URLs use absolute paths (https://example.com/page)
- 4File is under 50 MB uncompressed and 50,000 URLs
- 5lastmod dates use W3C format (YYYY-MM-DD)
- 6No duplicate URLs in the same sitemap
- 7No URLs blocked by robots.txt Disallow rules
- 8URLs return 200 status codes (not 404, 301, or 500)
- 9Sitemap is submitted to Google Search Console
Common sitemap errors
Invalid XML
Missing closing tags, incorrect nesting, or unescaped characters (&, <, >).
Wrong date format
Using formats like "01/15/2024" instead of "2024-01-15".
Relative URLs
Using "/page" instead of "https://example.com/page".
Too large
Over 50,000 URLs or 50 MB file size. Use a sitemap index for large sites.
Frequently asked questions
What is a sitemap validator?
A sitemap validator checks your XML sitemap for errors, validates URL format, and ensures compliance with the sitemaps.org protocol. It helps ensure search engines can properly crawl and index your website.
How do I check my sitemap for errors?
Enter your sitemap URL (e.g. example.com/sitemap.xml) above and click Validate. This sitemap checker will fetch your sitemap, parse all URLs, and validate against Google's sitemap requirements including lastmod dates, changefreq, and priority values.
What is changefreq in a sitemap?
Changefreq (change frequency) is an optional XML sitemap tag that tells search engines how often a page is likely to change. Values include always, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, and never. Note: Google largely ignores this tag and relies on actual crawl data instead.
What is a sitemap index?
A sitemap index is a file that references multiple sitemaps. It's used when your site has more than 50,000 URLs or your sitemap exceeds 50 MB. Each sitemap in the index can contain up to 50,000 URLs.
How do I validate my sitemap for Google?
Use this sitemap tester to validate your sitemap structure, then submit it to Google Search Console. Google will show any crawl errors. Ensure your sitemap uses absolute URLs, valid lastmod dates (YYYY-MM-DD), and doesn't exceed size limits.
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