Is your sitemap healthy?
Your sitemap is the map search engines and AIs use to find your pages. Check whether yours is set up correctly.
Takes a few seconds · No signup · We don't store your site
How it works
Enter your site
Type your domain or the exact address of your sitemap. No signup required.
We find and read your sitemap
If you give the domain, we look in your robots.txt and the usual paths, then read the sitemap as the official protocol requires.
See what's wrong
We tell you whether it's well-formed, how many URLs it has and, on a sample, whether any are broken.
Sitemaps and SEO
What is a sitemap, and why does it matter for Google and AI?
A sitemap is a file (usually sitemap.xml) that lists your website's pages so Google, Bing and AI tools like ChatGPT or Perplexity can find them faster and more reliably. A clean sitemap helps your pages get indexed; a broken one leaves pages off the map entirely.
Think of a sitemap as the table of contents in a book: it doesn't force anyone to read every chapter, but it tells them where everything is. The official protocol (sitemaps.org) sets firm limits: up to 50,000 URLs and 50 MB per file, in XML format with UTF-8 encoding. If your site grows beyond that, you split the sitemap into several files and group them under an index. You announce it in your robots.txt with a "Sitemap:" line so crawlers find it on their own. The most common problems aren't about size: they're URLs that return errors, blocked pages that shouldn't be listed, or fake "last modified" dates. One thing worth knowing: Google ignores the priority and changefreq tags, so don't waste time on them; the lastmod date does count, but only when it's genuine. AI search engines crawl these same files, so a clean sitemap is also your way in to being cited in AI answers.
Frequently asked questions
What is a sitemap?
It's a file (usually yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml) that lists your site's pages so search engines and AIs can discover and crawl them better.
How is it different from robots.txt?
robots.txt says what bots may crawl (permissions). The sitemap is the list of your pages. They work together: robots.txt can point to where your sitemap is.
What is a sitemap index?
When you have many URLs, they're split into several sitemaps and an index points to all of them. Our tool detects it and adds up the URLs of each one.
Do you check all my URLs?
No: checking thousands would be slow. We take a random sample of about 25 and see whether they respond, to give you a quick signal of broken links.
How many URLs can a sitemap have?
The protocol allows up to 50,000 URLs and 50 MB per file. If you exceed that, split it into several sitemaps and use an index.
How often should I update my sitemap?
Your sitemap should reflect your website as it is right now. If you publish or change pages often, the best setup is one that updates itself (most platforms like WordPress or Shopify do this automatically whenever you publish). If you maintain it by hand, refresh it every time you add, remove or significantly change pages. An outdated sitemap listing pages that no longer exist sends a poor signal to Google and to AI crawlers. The lastmod date only helps if it's accurate: stamping today's date on every URL makes search engines stop trusting it.
Do I have to submit my sitemap to Google, or does it find it on its own?
Both work, but it's worth doing both. The automatic way is to announce it in your robots.txt file with a line like "Sitemap: https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml", so any search engine or AI crawler that visits your site finds it on its own. On top of that, you can submit it manually in Google Search Console (free), which gives you reports on which URLs Google has indexed and which it hasn't. For Bing, there's Bing Webmaster Tools. You don't need to submit it to each AI separately: the ones that crawl the web follow your robots.txt just like search engines do.
Which pages should I include in my sitemap, and which should I leave out?
Include only the pages you want to appear in search and that load correctly (the ones returning a 200, not errors or redirects). Leave out: pages marked "noindex", thank-you or post-checkout pages, duplicate versions, internal search results, and URLs with parameters that add no value. A common mistake is listing pages you've also told search engines not to index: that sends mixed signals. The simple rule: if you don't want a page showing up in Google or being cited by an AI, don't put it in your sitemap.
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Last updated: June 2026
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